


I'll Stop the World

by half_witch



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: And just a lonely boy until he meets Simon, Baz is soft in this, Ebb is alive and well and basically Persephone, Hades is her wife, M/M, who has to be at the Sun in order to light it up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-11 11:42:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 49,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15314748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/half_witch/pseuds/half_witch
Summary: Inspired by tumblr @gaboo-draws art - Simon and Penny are created by the gods to light the Sun and Moon, but Penny sneaks down to Earth all the time and one day brings Simon down with her. When Simon gets lost and meets Baz, a lonely, orphaned boy in love with the stars, he starts breaking the rules to be with him. But with the world falling to chaos every time Simon leaves the Sun and the gods growing angry, he's forced to have to make the decision to sacrifice the world for his love, or his love for the world.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “And you and your friend just decided to have a picnic on Earth during the eclipse because she has the day off?”

**Simon**

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been told that people need me. Even Pen says it. I hate it when I’m like this and she has to sneak all the way from her Lunar Palace to try and calm me down because, despite what I thought for a long time, even Penelope, the woman in the Moon, has to follow some rules. But I need her right now. And I need to feel sorry for myself because I’ve spent my whole life trying not to think of all the ways I wish I could be normal— _human_.

I’ve always been a wreck, but right now, I know I’m a bloody mess. I’ve got snot on my nose that just won’t wipe away and my head is splitting from trying to stop crying. And, I’ve been glaring down at Earth so long from my balcony that I don’t think I can stop. But then she changes tactics because building up the hero complex they instilled in me when I was created isn’t working anymore. There’s nothing she can say about the greater good to make me care more than this heartache that makes me feel like my chest is capsizing. That is, until she actually uses his name.

“—Baz needs you, too.”

“Huh?” I ask, I can feel my eyes finally soften a little as I try not to hone in on the spot just outside the town where his family’s house sits with their garden and horses, all the way down on that little space rock I’m supposed to look after.

“Baz loves his family. You love Baz. By that reasoning, you can’t tell me that you just don’t care at all about humans anymore,” she says, but it’s softer than when she tries to make her points.

I don’t know if she knows I can hear how unsure she sounds. She doesn’t believe what she’s saying. If she did, she’d be a hypocrite, and Pen’s not a hypocrite. She’s brilliant and clever—that’s why so many humans love writing poems to her. Or stare at her with their friends, families, and lovers in the night while I’m away watching the other humans farther around.

No one watches me. I burn and glare too brightly to be noticed like that. I shine so bright, people turn away—everyone _loves_ the Moon. People just _need_ the Sun.

Except him.

“Baz loves me,” I mumble, still gazing at the blue planet below.

She sighs and finally plops down off her chair and onto the floor to scoot beside me. We’re both watching the world now. “I know he does, Si.... I’m sorry. I’m sorry that it can’t be me here and you the Moon, instead.”

I needed to hear that. To have someone else acknowledge that it’s not fair besides me—or besides Baz when I just left him like that. I had to. Gods, I’m a nightmare.

“If there was any way to share it, or trade, I—"

“No.” I finally flick my eyes back up to her. “I’d never let you give up Micah for me.”

“But now I have to watch you give up Baz,” she whispers guiltily.

“He’s already given up on me. But… I guess that’s for the best, yeah?”

I can tell she wants to argue. She’s doing this rare thing where she presses her lips into a thin line and narrows her eyes, like the truth is going to pour out of her if she gives even a little bit. But she doesn’t disagree. She just sits there with her opinion swirling storms behind her lips while I lean my temple against the banister and sigh.

“Why did we ever think the eclipse was a good idea?” I groan.

* * *

**_In the Beginning: Night Before the Eclipse_ **

 

**Baz**

My mother always told me stories of the heavens before she joined them. I like to think she’s twinkling from one of the three stars of Orion’s belt. I feel like out of all the constellations, she would pick that one in particular to wink at me from because it was the first one she taught me, the easiest to pick out in the endless sea of stars wrapping above our world. I remember how proud she looked when I pointed him out in the sky.

“And how do you know that’s the hunter, little puff?”

“One—two—three, that’s his belt right there. Oh, and the two over it are his shoulders, and on top of those two, that is—!”

Gods, I miss her. I miss my father, too, but he was always too grounded to end up in the stars. I feel his presence in the garden, where we spent early Springs after my mother’s passing planting, trimming, and re-directing the rose bushes and hedges into a tall labyrinth of leaves. It was our project. Something to keep us focused on when my mother passed and took all sense and meaning with her.

But it wasn’t enough to keep him alive either, and he eventually left me from a broken heart. Left me with one, too.

Aunt Fiona was furious with him those last days. I would hear her hissing at him, “You better fight harder, Malcolm. You are not leaving that boy without his parents.”

But it didn’t take. And now, Fiona and I live in the family house with an abandoned garden labyrinth that’s wild and feral from neglect.

I had promised myself to never step foot back in that thing. It had magic once, but when my father died, I realized that it didn’t. It never really did. That was just hope—a false hope.

So, now I know better than to take stories of magic and huntsmen in the stars seriously, but I feel closer to my mother on clear nights like this. And, I allow myself a moment to believe that one day I’ll be up there with her, too; staring down at people I love while they hang clothes on lines, splash in the winding river next to our village, and bake in the sun’s heat, or gaze lovingly back at the moon and stars, searching for patterns like I am tonight or shaping out the contours of the woman in the Moon.

That I can maybe find what I’m missing up there, too.

* * *

**_Day of the Eclipse_ **

 

**Simon**

“Pen, we can’t do this, this is insane.”

“The humans are used to it. If anything, they’ll be ecstatic that the eclipse is lasting longer than usual.”

“What if we get caught?” I’m practically jittering, biting at the skin around my thumb nail until Pen reaches over and snatches it away.

“What are the bosses going to do about it? Fire us?”

That’s what we call the Heirarchy, the creators, the gods and goddesses and those in between, of new, old, and legend. They’re timeless, universal. I’ve only seen a couple visit me here at the Sun Palace since I was placed here, and I think that was only because Pen started breaking rules over at the Moon. It was definitely all formality and a quick appearance to try and remind me who was in charge.

“We’ll get a slap on the wrist if anything disastrous happens,” she says certainly as she always does. “Which it won’t. This is fool proof and the humans are going to love it. Just stay close. Dropping down feels like being cut in half and falling down in pieces the first time.”

Pen does this all the time. She’s on a schedule now, and she goes to see Micah on Earth a few days of every month. The bosses were furious with her at first, but she’s deadly persuasive when she wants something hard enough, and a compromise was drawn. She gets her few days with Micah where he lives with his sisters and mother along the river and returns back up to light the night sky when her stay is over. I’ve asked her why she doesn’t just stay down there. She could if she wanted. The Moon doesn’t _need_ to be on rotation. The humans could learn to live without it, but she always says that his family needs him more now since his father died and that Micah respects her independence and need for space. And I think she stays for me, too.

I see her sneaking down to Earth throughout the month before schedule anyway. We laugh at the confused looks the poets, astronomers, and witches have when they search for the waning moon and find nothing but distant starlight. She’s messed up a lot of ritual offerings to the bosses. I think it’s hysterical and we laugh about it for days. Pen’s laughing now, but it’s different than anything I’ve ever heard from her before, this is maniacal.

The atmosphere is rustling around us, blowing her blue hair back and whipping my clothes against my skin. I’ve never felt this _cold_. It’s like I’m sinking deeper into the coldness as we fall towards Earth. We’re going to Micah’s house, but something not too far away catches my eye and I think I might have seen it before, but never in shadow.

There’s a mess of lines too sharp and angular, not like the forest paths that wind along the hillside, and something shimmering in the middle of it. Before I know it, I’m getting closer to it, my trajectory hijacked by instinct and I’m speeding up faster and faster and faster—I think I heard Pen’s voice yelling at me—but I can’t see her next to me, I can’t even see in front of me. The light floating off my skin is shining bright even for me and the dropping in my stomach is almost too much to handle and I—

My feet hit the ground first, but I end up smacking the rest of me into it, too. But I’m _cold_ and it’s _dark_ and I open my eyes and see how the stars and sky almost curve around me in a dome and it’s so _different_ down here. I claw at the cool ground, coating my fingers in soil, before sitting up.

I’m lying partly on a mosaic circle.

Huh.

That’s what it was. Just pieces of shiny tile and mirror.

Oh, crap. Where’s Pen?

 

**Baz**

Fiona’s inside because she doesn’t care about eclipses. She calls the Moon a rock in the sky and the Sun a fire ball. You’d think that marrying Nicodemus would soften her up to the romances of heavens a little bit, but she just teases the both of us.

“What am I supposed to do with a boy who’s in love with stars and Nico who _thinks_ he’s a poet,” she always huffs, rolling her eyes.

I’m not _in love_ with stars. I just like looking at them. Every night. Okay, maybe it’s less of a casual occurrence and more of a secret hobby—but that’s beside the point here. Which is—

A shooting star. Just fell. Into the garden maze.

And from my window, it looks like it’s somewhere in the middle. It’s still glowing, but then it starts to _move_.

“Fi—” I start to yell, there’s no way this is real, but then I pause because my head is craning out the window and I can clearly hear someone shouting out:

_“Pen!”_

It rings like bells and I can only imagine what it sounds like when it laughs, and like a possessed man, I skip steps and nearly fall on my face downstairs then break out of the house into the eerie out-of-place darkness around me and head straight for the garden.

I know this labyrinth like the back of my hand because I built it with my own hands, but it’s so overgrown that I have to double back and take alternate paths to get to the general area that the shooting star fell to. I know I’m close when I can see the yellow glow bouncing off the top leaves of the hedge walls in front of me.

It’s in the center, where my mother’s memorial piece lays embedded, tile by tile.

For a moment, my heart skips and I wonder if it is my mother. I try not to hope, but the closer I get, rushing around corners and trying to see if I can claw through hedge walls, the more I can imagine it—her standing there just as I remember her, tall and upright, a queen of books and sextants and star maps and—

I hear a gasp. It takes me a moment to realize it’s me because I’m standing in the tall darkness of the garden walls, and in front of me is _radiance_. Shimmering bronze curls as unruly as the roses and curling leaves of the hedges, skin _glowing_ and speckled with galaxies of tan freckles and brown moles.

“Uh… Hello,” it—I mean, _he_ grins and waves awkwardly.

I don’t know what to say to that and it’s been ingrained in me since childhood to never let my words falter, but I’m pretty sure this boy is the shooting star. And he’s rushing up to me and before I can say ‘Wait’ or ‘Back the hell up’, he’s holding his glowing, golden hand out to me.

I don’t take it, I just keep staring at him with my wide, fearful eyes.

I wonder if I look like prey.

 

**Simon**

I think this human’s angry with me.

Is this his strange garden? He’s not shaking my hand. His face is impassive, not one bit of a smile on his lips at all. He has nice lips. And eyes. His eyes look like dark storm clouds that cover Earth, when lightning strikes through them before shooting down below. I think it might be my light changing his color. I wish I could see him during the day—well, the day while I’m up in the sky making it.

“This is what you do on Earth, yeah?” I ask awkwardly, still holding out my rejected hand. “Or do you bow? We bow, but I’ve seen humans do this when they cross paths.”

“…Humans?” He speaks. His voice sounds as cold as Earth feels. I think he’s definitely upset with me. I’m about to pull back my hand and start shouting for Pen to come find me again because I’ve been here for a minute and already aggravated a human, but he must sense it because he reaches forward and clasps my hand with both of his.

“You’re so warm,” he whispers, staring at the light bouncing off my skin onto his hands and forearms like a crystal in the sun—or well, in me, I guess. “You fell,” he finally says more determinedly.

“Yeah, this is my first time so I kind of got lost.” I chuckle nervously. He’s still holding onto my hand, but finally he looks back up from our hands to my eyes with a wondrous smile on his face.

“Are you a star?”

I laugh—for some reason it makes him smile wider. “I’m a Simon.”

“Baz,” he says breathlessly. The longer he holds my hand, the more his features soften. This is my first time meeting a human and I’m excited, but this is his first time meeting a star, so it makes sense for him to be… unsettled.

 

**Baz**

He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

His hand feels like lying down on warm sand in the afternoon, you just want to hug yourself in it and fall asleep. But his eyes shine blue like the river from my window, the same kind of blue tint water has when you stare at it from a distance.

He _is_ a star. I know it, I can feel it. Maybe he does stare down at the blue of Earth every now and then. I don’t know how interesting watching us would really be.

“What are you doing in my garden?”

“Oh… I, uh, well. It’s kind of a long story…”

“Then give me the short version.”

“I’m not supposed to be here,” he blurts out and rapidly adds, “I—I got distracted when I was falling with my friend and she’s going to her Micah’s house which is a little white house on the other side of the forest from here; it’s not that far when you’re falling, but when you’re down here it kind of—”

Who’s house? Hermicah? They don’t sound familiar, so I ask. “Which family? Hermicah?”

“No, _her_ Micah. His name is Micah. And he’s her Micah. You know, her lover.”

“She’s a star with a boyfriend on Earth?” I ask incredulously.

“Oh, no. She’s not a star. She’s the Moon.”

“…Your friend is the Moon.”

“Yeah,” he nods happily.

“…With a boyfriend on Earth.”

“No, they’re lovers. He’s not a boy friend.”

“It means the same thing here.”

“Oh. Boy-friend. It sounds odd to me.”

“Well, that’s people in general.” I shrug. I can’t take my eyes off him. Gods, he’s so bright, I’m going to see spots everywhere after this.

“What are you, Baz? Are you a farmer? Do you have horses? Pen told me that they’re called horses. I see a lot of them over in this area. What are they like? What does it feel like when they run really fast? They look faster than humans. What sounds do they make? I can’t hear all the way up there, but I can see pretty clearly if I focus in on one spot for long enough.”

“I’m not a farmer. Academia, I’m studying; astronomy mostly. We do have horses, but you might spook them right now. It’s dark and you’re a _star_.”

“Oh…” he whispers.

The utter hopelessness and disappointment on his face shatters me; my heart is breaking to pieces watching whatever reality this star belongs to sink into him. So, I take every pretense and carefully lectured lesson of Grimms and Pitches being impervious to irrationality and emotionality and throw it out of my goddamn mind because I must be out of my mind. I’m still holding _a star’s_ hand—scratch that, both hands because now I’m tugging him forward and urging him to follow me. I don’t let go of his other hand until we have to squeeze through the winding bushes and hanging branches of the maze, but he’s close to my back as we run through—I can feel him radiating warmth like a caress over the back of my neck.

Getting through the labyrinth is a lot easier when you know where you’re going and in the amount of time it took me to find Simon, we’re already at the stables where, as I predicted, the horses stir. But, I take Simon to the back—marveling at how much light his body emits. It’s softer in here though, like candlelight in a dance hall, and I find my way to the white mare in the corner.

“There are so many!” Simon gasps.

“My uncle is a trainer. But Ursa’s mine. And luckily, she doesn’t seem bothered by you.”

 

**Simon**

Horses are magnificent. They’re so much bigger than I thought they would be. I’m almost scared to be honest.

“Ursa?” I ask. Boy-friend. Ursa. Baz. I’m learning so many wonderful names today.

“Like the constellation?”

“Oh. Micah teaches Pen some of those. It’s easier to see them when she’s not in the sky, he said.”

“Which constellation are you part of?”

“I don’t think I am?” Do they use the sun in constellations? But that requires night time and visibility—Oops, Baz is saying something technical and intelligent, I can tell by the way his brows raise at the information.

“—but in short, Ursa minor and Ursa major can help you pinpoint the North Star. It’s what we humans use to get around at night down here. And Ursa here has a great sense of direction. So. Do you have time for a ride?”

“Huh?”

“It’s dark, but I think we can manage with you lighting up the place.” He smirks at me, throwing a contraption over her back and leaning down to fasten the buckles underneath.

“A ride?”

“Yes, Simon. A ride. On the horse. Don’t you want to see how fast she can go?” He’s already leading Ursa, one hand on her reins, and me, his other hand finding mine again, through the stables until we’re looking out at an endless darkness that meets my halo of light surrounding us.

“I’ve never done this before,” I say hesitantly.

“You’re a star, Simon. I figured as much. Now hop up.”

I stare at him then back at Ursa, hoping to get across that I don't know how the hell I’m supposed to mount this giant creature. He sighs and rolls his eyes dramatically then sweeps his hand at the leather loop.

“It’s called a stirrup. Just put your right foot through that and hoist yourself up.”

I’m still feeling cautious, but I don’t know how much longer I have so I do as he says, scrambling onto Ursa’s ‘saddle’ when he helps me swing my other leg over.

“Okay, scoot up.”

“What?”

“Well, you didn’t expect me to put a star to ride a horse by itself, did you? Scoot forward. I’m coming up behind you.” And then he is. I can feel him pressed against my back. He’s not as cold as the air around us, so it’s nice. I like Baz’s cold. It’s comfortable and a nice change from the consuming burn that plays on my skin all the time.

“Now what, Baz?” I ask, staring ahead of us.

“Hm… It’s kind of dark,” he says.

“Oh. That’s, well, I’m sorr—”

He’s already wrapped his arms on each side of me, reins in hand, when he makes a clicking noise that gets Ursa moving. I squeak when I feel her moving beneath my legs.

 

**Baz**

I smirk when Simon squeaks. It’s cute. He’s cute. He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and right now my chest is pressed against his back and I’m so close to his hair that my senses are drowning; it reminds me of the smell of toasting almonds during autumn. He smells like comfort and coziness and I just want to bury my head into his neck covered in constellations because he’s a _star_ , an actual bloody star. Riding a horse with me like we’re boyfriends going out for a lovely trot in the fields.

“Ready now?” I ask with mischief.

“For what?”

“Hyah!”

I snap the reins down and Ursa starts sprinting, powerful stomps sending us flying forward into the field in Simon’s light. Ursa knows this field and so do I, it feels like we could get along without Simon lighting the way, which only emboldens the both of us to go faster.

Simon’s yelling, full and round and filled with life, and then he stops and starts letting out howls of delight. Stardust is flicking passed me as I lean to see around Simon’s head.

“This—is—amazing!” He laughs and I’m almost upset that I don’t get to see how his eyes crinkle or how big the grin he no doubt has on right now is. “Baz? Baz, can we go faster?” He’s got a death grip on my forearms, but I slap the reins down again and Ursa picks up.

The wind rips around us, the darkness parting for the aura of light enveloping all of us, and it’s the most alive I’ve felt since… Well. I suppose since I can remember. Everything’s a strain when you’re me. Be careful of your father, you’re his late wife’s son. Be careful of you aunt, you’re her late sister’s son. Be careful of the world—you’re the last to the Grimm-Pitch lines and, _“We have a reputation to uphold, Basilton." "Don’t blow it, Basilton.”_

We do a few laps around the field, zig-zags, and I even get Ursa to jump over the dip where the old stream used to run. That one actually caught Simon off-guard though and with that, we slowed a bit, making it easier for Simon to bombard me with questions about mundane human life and for me to answer them as best as I can. It has to have been at least an hour of him spouting them off the top of his head in rapid fire. My throat’s getting sore from talking.

“So the lakes have different water than the sea?”

“Yes. Sea has salt. Most plants and animals can’t survive off of that.”

“Have you ever been to the sea?”

“I used to go with my cousin during summers.”

“What’s his name?”

“His name was Dev.”

“Was?”

“He died a few years ago.”

 

**Simon**

Baz lets more emotion slip by when no one’s watching him and right now, he’s pressed behind me. In a way, I see him much clearer.

“You miss him?” I ask.

“I’ll always miss him. But I got used to it.”

“To missing him?”

“To being on my own.”

“How did he die?”

“Same sickness that took my father. Just a human cold. Common.”

Baz knows so much loss already. It always breaks my heart to watch widows and orphaned children in cemeteries during funeral ceremonies. I would watch with morbid curiosity at first because I never had anyone to lose like that. But, I empathize more now because one thing I’ve learned from humans is that they always come together eventually to ease their pain. Pen and I do that, too.

“Do you miss him, too?” I ask.

“Every day.”

Yeah, I can hear the depth of his words better spoken in my ear as Ursa walks us back towards the estate. It’s a lot less confusing when I don’t have to pair it up with his face.

“That can get lonely,” I say lowly, hoping to convey that I’m not pitying him, but that I understand it—I can understand at least that part really well.

“I have my aunt when I need to fulfill my social quota.”

“I have Pen. Once in a while.”

“The Moon. Right. Can I ask you something?”

“Do I ever ask you if I can ask a question?”

“I’m not a star. I have no excuse not to be polite.”

“I’ve been that bad? I’m sorry—”

“You apologize too much.”

“Sor—"

 

**Baz**

I think I’ve teased him too much, I was trying to be funny. Sometimes that happens with me though. I think I’m being charming and for the most part, I usually am, but there are times I just come off as a prick.

“I’m just teasing, Simon,” I whisper closely into his ear and he shivers under my breath.

 

**Simon**

Even his breath is cool against me. I love it.

 

**Baz**

“Were you born a star?”

He clears his throat and answers, “I was definitely created to be a star, yes. Just like Pen was created to be Lady Moon.”

“And you and your friend just decided to have a picnic on Earth during the eclipse because she has the day off?”

“Something like that.”

 

**Simon**

I don’t want to talk about Pen or me or stars—I just want to talk about Baz and his world of humans and relationships, moments, and trips. Of being an active participant in your life. But reality is setting in.

“I really should find her, but I don’t know how to from down here. It’s easy to watch her from up there. I sort of have an idea of which part of the land she went to, but being here, it’s not as clear, or flat.”

 

**Baz**

“I have a map of the area. It’ll be the view you’re used to, too.” Then under my breath I say, nearly laugh, “What mum would’ve given to meet a star.” I shift back to glance up at Orion’s belt. “You don’t happen to know any stars named Natasha Grimm-Pitch, would you?”

“I don’t know any other stars, actually.”

“None?”

“Nope.”

“Just you?”

“Just me. Who’s Natasha?”

“That’s my mother.”

“Then why would…” Simon stops speaking because he’s realized the implication. Now he's realized I’ve played the second half of my ‘I’m an orphan’ hand in the never-ending ‘poor Basilton Grimm-Pitch’ pity party. I expect him to confront it, but instead he says, “If any human’s life and love for the stars would turn them into one, it would be yours, Baz. I know it.”

I’ve been mentioning my mother on-and-off this whole time because I can’t help but feel her with me right now, with this dream come true.

“I don’t want to ride to the house,” I finally say after a moment.

“Why not?”

“Because that means you’re going to have to leave.”

“…I don’t think we have much of a choice now,” Simon says, staring up at the sky. Suddenly the fields are illuminated in a silvery glow and the moon in the sky is filling up again.

“What’s going on? Is that your friend?”

“Yeah, that was plan B to signal each other back in case we couldn’t go together.” Simon grips down on my hands and pulls them and the reins back until Ursa slows to a stop.

I swallow the lump in my throat and move to get off Ursa.

He looks down at me as I stare up into his eyes, offering my hand to help him down. I’m covered in both his friend’s moonlight and the light dancing across his skin and Simon’s mouth drops open.

“You’re beautiful,” he says in awe and reverence like he’s not just looking at some plain human; like he’s the human and I’m the star.

He reaches for my hand and jumps down in haste, stumbling a little into me, and then looks up at me again.

“Looks like I have to leave…” he says with so much regret.

“To be with the other stars,” I say.

“No. To just… be with myself. Thank you so much for this. You’re by far my favorite human.” He smiles.

“I’m the only one you’ve met,” I say, hoping Pen’s blue glow is masking the heat rising to my cheeks and ears.

“I’ve watched humans my entire life. I know how to pick out the special ones,” he says. Then he reaches up and cups my cheek, watching me as if my reaction would be anything less than to press the side of my face back into its warmth.

He looks so sad. And lonely. But he must decide on something because then he smiles and leans forward, pressing his lips to mine.

I must be living a charmed life. I’m kissing a star.

His lips remind me of every warm and happy memory I’ve had in my entire life all at once. Then he dips his head and my mind stops thinking all together when his tongue licks into my mouth the way flames of a burning fire move.

I’m kissing _Simon_ and I want to perish in his fire, with every second more of his soft lips on mine.

But he breaks away, mouth dragging back my bottom lip for a second like his body is fighting against his own reasoning.

Our foreheads are still touching. His nose bumps into mine on purpose and we smile at each other, the both of us glowing gold in the moonlight. He leans back in for one more slow kiss then says,

“I’ll watch for you, Baz.”

And in a second, he’s a blaze of light, ascending like he’s lightning. In a minute, he’s gone and lost to the sky of starlight and I can’t see which constellation he’s flown to. A minute after that, the sky begins to lighten again like dawn arising, and I realize that the moon is already high in the sky, so small and subdued in the light of day, off to the right, and dead ahead of me is bright, blaring sunlight that feels so familiar falling against me. Pen wasn’t blocking the sun just now. Everything was dark, but she had already passed by.

That’s when it hits me. I didn’t just spend the eclipse falling impulsively head over heels with any rogue star.

I fell in love with our star.

I fell in love with the Sun.

And his name is Simon.

* * *

“Baz! Where have you been?!”

“Stargazing.”

“That’s it? Just ‘stargazing.’”

“Yes, Fiona.”

“Did you not notice the two hours of inexplicable darkness that the Earth was suddenly plunged into?”

I did... But didn’t, at the same time. How had I not thought more of that. Then again, when I think of Simon’s hair and stardust, moles and shimmering blue eyes—how could I ever pay attention to something else so dull?

“Well, boyo. While you were out daydreaming about snogging the stars, the world went to shit. Mrs. Talbot’s carriage went off the road and—”

I don’t care. I don’t care about anything.

Just blue eyes. Bronze Curls. Moles, freckles, gold skin.

His name is Simon and he’s the Sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little reference to the myth of Icarus's father with the labyrinth because I'm a nerd :D Thanks so much for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Alright. Loverboy’s out of view now. Come on, take a break from your stalking and look at the book Micah’s given you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it begins--

**Simon**

I can tell Baz doesn’t spend much time outdoors. He pauses and squints when he walks out of the house like he’s not used to all the sunlight—to me. But, this last week, he’s been making more of an effort to sit outside with his books. Lately he’s been tending to the garden maze, too. I see him trimming back the protruding vines and branches with garden shears. He’s even had pallets of bright white cobblestone brought in for some border project he’s started on the outside perimeter. I want to ask him what’s changed, why he’s suddenly so concerned about making those rows perfectly straight again.

I like to pretend that he’d say something like, ‘It’s just an excuse to be outside where you can see.’ It seems like he does try to look up at me, but I’m too bright. I’m always too much.

 

**Baz**

The garden is just an excuse to be outside where he can see me.

_‘I’ll watch for you, Baz.’_

I’ve been replaying his voice in my mind for the last week. I don’t want to forget how his whisper set me aflame, low and smooth, and so much like the whisper of logs burning in the fireplace.

I wonder if he is—watching for me. I thought maybe I would notice, like the sun would somehow be different for me, but it’s the same long days, same light, same hues at sunlight. Yet, everything looks… stunning. The roses look redder—because _he’s_ lighting them. The river glitters like diamonds—and _he’s_ doing that. I like to believe that I was a special enough human experience that he would do those things, in particularly, for me.

Fiona thinks I’m sick.

“You’ve been awfully quiet, Baz.”

“I’m always quiet, Fiona.”

“More so. And you keep sighing.”

“You give me plenty to sigh about.”

“And deflecting.”

“…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Now playing stupid.”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sick?”

“Sick of this conversation.” I sigh dramatically. Maybe I have been sighing a little more than usual. But a heaviness just settles in my chest around my heart and I have to relieve the pressure somehow.

“You’re lucky you’re my favorite nephew,” she mutters, slamming the poetry book sitting in Nico’s lap closed as he sleeps upright on the chaise. His snore turns into a spluttering noise at the slap of the book cover.

“I’m your _only_ nephew.” I roll my eyes as she glides from Nico towards me.

“Doesn’t make you any less near and dear to me, Basilton.” She smirks, pinching and tugging on my cheek.

I fix her a glare. It only makes her smirk more and she walks passed me and into the hall. I watch her disappear, my mind flashing with image after image of Simon smiling, laughing, his nose crinkled in confusion… embarrassed as he holds out his hand to me. I want to tell her, but how do I explain that I met the Sun and now I’m utterly destroyed and devastated because I have no idea if I’ll ever see him again.

I’m in my room and flopping back on my bed where I’ve fantasized about hair spilling stardust with every movement and shake, and how I wish I hadn’t been so consumed by the heat of his kisses to actually reach up and see what those shimmering strands would feel like through my fingers. Even my dreams have been blessed after I force myself to fall back asleep in the mornings until my memories twist into new scenarios and I get to relive him again and again and again.

I’ve learned to leave the curtains to my window and balcony open, too, and sleep well into the late morning when he makes his way over the mountain and floods onto my bed. And, I _may_ be sleeping in just my pants because I’m weak, a human trying to entice the Sun to come back to me.

Tonight, though, I sit at the table on my balcony and stare up at his friend, _Pen_ , the woman in the Moon. It’s easier to watch her and I get this feeling staring straight at her craters and patterns that I’m being watched back. She saw us, me and Simon, in the field before he returned back to the sky. She _must_ know. I wonder if she thinks I’m pathetic, a human dreaming of things beyond my realm of reality. I wonder if she’ll go and tell Simon that I’ve been staring wistfully into the night sky in a daze. I kind of want her to.

I’m too cold out on the balcony, I’ve been spoiled by his touch, so I stand and look back once more at the moon then return to my room, remove my shirt, and crawl beneath my blankets. They’re not as warm, nothing ever will be, but feeling his light in the morning setting into my skin is close enough.

 

**Simon**

It’s been two weeks and I guess it’s sort of stalkerish, but all I watch is Baz until his little realm on Earth spins away from my view. I see him in the morning, the slow spread of light across his carpets, then his bedposts, his deep red furnishings, and then finally the arm he always has slung over the side followed by his bare back and his beautiful face, soft and smooth with sleep.

Even in my light, his hair is as pitch black as it was when I brought shadows on the Earth—no tones of red or gold which is enchanting because everything about me is red or gold. I wish I could see if it’s as silky through my hands as it looks.

“Still daydreaming about your human?” Pen says, landing down on the balcony and lounging back into the chair next to me. She waits for the goofy smile that always steals my composure whenever she mentions Baz.

“He’s sleeping,” I say dreamily, staring down at him with my chin resting on my arms, crossed on the banister. He’s turned onto his back now, face turned away from my light, and I have a great view of the planes of his stomach.

“I may have been observing him looking dreamy and lost at the stars last night.”

That only makes me smile more, I bury it down into my arm. “I want to see him again, Pen.”

I tear my eyes away from Baz for a moment to see her playful expression slip a little.

“I’m not _going_ to. But I just want to,” I reassure, rolling my eyes.

“Just… Keep things in perspective, Si. Don’t get too lost in the fantasy.”

“I know, I know.” And I do know. I can’t leave the Sun Palace without the day falling into darkness.

Pen’s lucky. She leaves and night just goes darker. But I don’t think about that. I have lists of things I don’t think about because I can’t change them. So, I do what I do best. I push it away, turn to her, and smile brightly again at what I do have.

“Look! He’s waking up,” I nearly shout in excitement. This is my favorite part of Baz’s mornings because as sweet and soft as his sleepy smiles are, my light in his face makes him wince and his usual morning scowl appears.

“He’s kind of grumpy in the mornings.”

“I _know_ ,” I nearly squeal. It’s exciting because it’s _me_ that he’s reacting to. It’s like I’m there. Sometimes I imagine he scowls like that because I’ve pushed him to the edge of the bed or stolen all the covers. _‘Simon,’_ he’d complain in a rough voice thick with sleep. And I’d shush him and pull him back towards the center, towards me, and wrap myself around him and his coldness.

“Alright. Loverboy’s out of view now. Come on, take a break from your stalking and look at the book Micah’s given you.”

 

**Baz**

I have to go to the university today and while usually it fills me with a sense of purpose and focus, I’m just disappointed I can’t work on the garden. I’ve almost finished laying out the white cobblestones.

But I’m a Grimm-Pitch and I can’t be seen like I’ve just rolled out of bed, thrown on a shirt, and ride up on Ursa unkempt. I pull on some gray breeches and tuck in my shirt, button up a black waistcoat, and wish I didn’t have to try more than that. But then comes a cravat, my coat, riding boots, a few combs of my hair, and voila—I’m upholding the family name.

I skip breakfast because I’m almost late—my new morning schedule of trying to seduce the Sun is impeding on my responsibilities, but I refuse to stop. Not while I can still taste the smoke of his tongue and feel the burn of his palm on my cheek. Maybe when it fades, I’ll give up on this useless endeavor, but until then, I’m going to enjoy feeling so _alive_ for once.

“Baz. You can’t skip breakfast.”

“But I’m late—have you seen my school books?”

“Not eating, oversleeping, sighing—Baz! Is there a bloke?” She gasps deviously.

“Found them,” I call over my shoulder as I race towards the door.

“Baz! Answer me!”

“ _Goodbye_ , Fi!”

“Hey, you cur! Be careful today. I have a bad feeling.”

“Nope, I think you’re just finally noticing your attitude.” I wave off to her and send her a cheeky smile before turning the corner and down to the stables.

Ursa seems to know I’m late and she’s ready to run. Soon, we’re off and galloping along the shortcut through the hills.

 

**Simon**

“Baz must be late again,” I say absent-mindedly, taking a bite of a scone. Do I need to eat? No, but I enjoy it. Are scones the official food of the gods? No, but I’m tired of grapes. Everything is grapes with them—if it’s not on a vine, it’s spoilt in a bottle.

“Why do you say that? Oh, I suppose he’s going a little faster than people usually do.”

“No, he’s taking the shortcut through the hills. He only takes that when he’s late.”

“Huh.” I can see Pen watching me warily. I don’t think she likes how much I notice about Baz. But I told her. It’s not like I’m going to do anything.

“He stays out of the deep forest though which is good because the bears have been…” I don’t notice I stop talking at first because I’m zoned in on the roadblock up ahead. “Pen, what’s that in the road?”

“Where?”

“Up ahead.” I point.

“Oh, snakes. There were bandits a couple nights ago. They blockaded the bridge to stop travelers and wagons—”

My eyes must go comically wide because she raises both hands up and starts shushing the hysteria arising in me.

“No, no, no, no! They’re gone. Long gone. Another group of merchants ran them off. It’ll only take Baz a moment to clear off the entrance. Don’t worry.” She smiles to try to make me smile.

I whip my head back down at Baz and Ursa. They’re slowing from what I can see in the break of the trees. Baz’s head is turning all around, drawing the pistol from the holster in his saddle out. I want to yell to him, “It’s okay! You’re safe!” But he can’t hear me. He does, however, try to look up at me—and I wonder if it’s for me. Like he knows I’m watching and is looking for some confirmation that everything’s alright. He can’t look much longer than a glance, shielding his eyes momentarily with the hand holding his pistol.

“He’s fine, he’ll figure it out in a second,” Pen says.

We watch him walk Ursa closer towards the bridge. After he deems it safe, he dismounts, tucks the pistol in the waistband of his breeches, and starts throwing the branches piled up onto the sides.

He looks at ease now. Maybe annoyed by the way he’s chucking those limbs, but my panic spikes again when I see a muddy brown mass lumbering over in his direction from down the road.

“Pen…”

It’s bigger than a horse, wider, thicker—I know these creatures, they’re called bears and this one looks fixated on Ursa.

Ursa who’s right behind Baz.

The bear is going towards Baz.

“It’s just a bear, Simon. It’ll probably scamper off in a minute—”

Ursa’s losing it. She can sense it and is backing away, jumping high in the air. The next I see is Baz shooting his pistol in the air. The bear doesn’t look scared though, it’s swaying its head back and forth in irritation and starting to run.

I jump to my feet and before Pen can finish saying, “Simon, no!” I’m already off the balcony and plummeting towards Earth.

 

**Baz**

This is how I die. By a bloody bear. This one doesn’t look healthy though and is matted in mud. It wants Ursa and Ursa is my only companion, so I’ll be damned if I let that happen. Still, she won’t take the hint and run off. Instead, she’s backed up towards the blockade and loyally staying near me.

I shoot at the bear, but it’s still too far to make contact. It’s going to plow into me before the bullet can slow it down.

I’m so fixated on the bear charging at me that I don’t notice the sky darkening until I see that wondrous stream of sparks and glowing light hit the ground a few yards in front of me.

It’s Simon and I shout at him to move out of the way because he’s right in my line of sight and I can’t see the bear, but then he places both hands up in front of him and yells—no, _commands_ it.

“Stop!” he says again.

The bear slows to a stop in front of him and is huffing and snorting and clacking its teeth together menacingly.

“This human is off limits. Tell your kind. Tell the others. And, tell Agatha. He will _not_ be touched!”

The bear calms. Like it’s _understanding_ him and backs up, turns, and runs off to the right and into the deeper side of the forest.

I’m breathing hard because Ursa and I probably would’ve died, but also because Simon’s here and he saved us—but mostly because Simon’s just here in front of me, glowing like the Sun he is.

“Simon,” I say breathlessly, pistol falling to my side.

He turns his head to me, looks back at where the bear ran off to, then runs the few paces between us.

He cups my face in his hands and I’m so _warm_ again. I let my eyes close and my hands find his waist because I never thought I’d feel his heat again.

“Are you okay?” he asks, voice crackling in panic. I open my eyes. He sounds like logs spitting and sparking embers, the same amber sparks falling off his curls as he tilts his head to the side, inspecting me. I bring a hand up and run my fingers through it. It’s so soft, like the way a flame feels bending against your skin when you run your fingers through it. I pull my hand away to see if it leaves soot. It doesn’t. I bury them back into the hair at the nape of his neck.

“You saved me,” I say in awe because I’m just a human and a star fell down to Earth just to keep me alive.

“You can’t take this road anymore. It’s not safe. I know you haven’t been sleeping early lately—Penny told me—but you’re just going to have to be late and take the main road. There were bandits here two nights ago, and even though the animals won’t come near you from now on, that won’t stop people.”

“You’ve been watching me?” I ask, my voice nearly breaks. Gods, I’m weak.

“I told you I would.” He smiles at me and again I feel like I’m the star and he’s the human.

“Can I kiss you?” I blurt out. I’m too far gone to feel embarrassed and this may be my last chance to do it, but then his golden skin turns a pink amber across his cheeks and he ducks his head down.

And then _he_ kisses _me_.

 

**Simon**

I pull his face down to me and push my lips onto his. They’re just as soft as I remember; as when he smiles in his sleep. He groans when I run my tongue along his bottom lip, across the seam of his lips, and I guess that means he likes it because he’s clenching onto my hair as if to say, ‘You’re not going _anywhere_.’

And I don’t want to. Damn the gods, I really don’t, but I know he has a life under the sun to live and I’m both keeping him from going to university and also depriving him of light to get there.

He must sense my struggle and stops, our lips still touching when he speaks.

“What’s wrong?” he pants. He’s got a death grip on my waist, but his hand has loosened from my hair.

“You’re late. You’re going to be even later the longer I keep you and stay down here.”

He pulls his head away and bursts out in laughter.

“What? What’d I say?” I ask.

Baz's hand slides from my waist to around my back and pulls me closer to him when he says, “You think I give even the slightest damn about schooling when you’re _here_ , in my arms, kissing me?”

“Well, you study so much. I know it’s important…”

“It is, but, trust me, I’m not half as dedicated as I’ve probably made myself out to be lately.”

“But you’re always with your books outside—”

“Sitting in the daylight—under _you_.”

“So the garden…?”

“I’m so far ahead in my studies thanks to you that I could teach my lectures. I figured gardening was a better excuse to stay outside.”

“So, you’ve been staying outdoors for me?” I ask. I’ve fantasized about this since the eclipse, yet it’s still hard for me to believe.

“I’ve missed you, Simon. I’ve missed you so much,” he whispers, pressing his lips to my cheek, then again to the tip of my nose, down to the corner of my mouth, and finally lingering on my lips like he’s trying to savor me. Like I’m the precious one.

“So,” I try to say, it’s muffled against his insistent mouth. “You’re skipping lecture today?”

He looks amused, his eyes bright like lightning storms again in the glow running off my skin. “They can’t blame me for not coming if I can’t see my way there now, can they?”

And I’m already here on Earth. And I’m already in Baz’s embrace. So, since I’m down here—and it’ll never _ever_ happen again—I decide to make the most of it.

“Can we ride Ursa again?” I grin.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for making it this far!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Simon’s responsible, he’s just… Taking a few breaks every now and then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D Thanks so much for reading!

**Baz**

Simon’s in my garden again. He’s hidden to Fiona who's on the first floor, but from my window I can see his glow in the center. I run down the stairs and don’t stop until he’s there in front of me and in my arms.

After the bear, he tried not to come. Every time he did, I ran through the maze and in between frenzied kisses, his arms thrown over my shoulders and clutching me to him, he would say, “I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I just had to see you—”

And I shut up his apologies every time and keep his tongue busy with mine because I don’t care if the whole world goes dark. He’s _here_ and I’m in love with him and the way I feel myself go lightheaded from panting, and burn from the heat of his kisses, and the heat of his arms hugging me impossibly close from around my neck.

Fiona doesn’t let me forget the consequences of our reunions, not that she knows I’m the reason that Simon says, “I don’t care. I’ll stop the world for you, Baz. I’ll stop the whole bloody world.” Still, it should make me feel guilty when she always goes on about who got stuck at so-and-so’s manor for an extra night, the carriages stalled on the road until the light returns, or the sound of her cackle at the misfortunes of the local men having their hunting trips ruined. Some of the stories are more serious though. People think the old gods have been angered and new religious zealots are trying to start chaos in society. Farmers have begun to complain about the effects on their livestock, on their harvesting schedules, and the progress of their crops.

But we don’t stop. And I love him. I love him, I love him, I love him, I—

“Baz.”

I love him so much.

“Basil.”

I love him with everything I have, every piece of my existence has his name seared into it like a brand from his fire. I just want him every moment he’s not here, when he’s shining on someone else on the other side of the world or just up in my sky during the day, trying to stay away from me.

“Baz!”

“What do you want, Fiona?!” I snap. I don’t mean to. I just haven’t been sleeping regularly. Sometimes he comes at night—the real night—and other times during the day, but then it _becomes_ night. I don’t understand time anymore. All I know is him.

“What’s his name?” she asks, taking no offense to my outburst.

I want to sing it, but I don’t. I just push my eggs around my plate and say, “Who?”

“Come off it, Baz. What’s his name, kiddo?” she asks. Sweeter. Fiona isn’t sweet, so I look up in suspicion. But, I don’t see any mocking or ulterior motive. She’s staring at me intently with the barest hint of a smirk on her face, and it makes every bit of my resolve and stubbornness melt because I want to tell someone. I want to share my secret. I want to scream at the top of my lungs that—I, Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch, love Simon.

I don’t scream though. I just breathe out, another sigh, “Simon.”

“Is he from school?”

I snort.

“Good. I don’t like any of those empty-headed university gits. They’re not good enough for a Pitch.”

I don’t say anything. I just poke at the yoke of my egg, testing to see how much pressure it’ll take to pop. Kind of like me.

“Is he handsome?” she tries again.

“Like a star,” I smirk.

“Wow. You’ve got it bad, boyo. Is that who you’ve been sneaking off to in the nights and Darkness?”

Simon leaving the Sun Palace has gotten so frequent that everyone’s taken to calling my secret rendezvous with him the ‘Darkness.’ I look her in the eye, smirk, and take a large bite out of my breakfast. I don’t feel the least bit guilty.

She rolls her eyes and tilts her cheek up expectantly when Nico walks through. He kisses it and resumes his seat across from me. It’s Fiona who sits at the head of the table like a queen.

“What’d I miss?” he asks.

Fiona perks her head up, sneer on her face, but when her eyes meet mine, she stops herself, turns to Nico, and nonchalantly says, “Baz was just telling me about another one of those thoroughbred trollops in the city having a crush on him.”

I avert my eyes back down to my food, picking up another bite.

I’m her favorite nephew and I know it. I’d never say it, but she truly is my favorite aunt, too.

 

**Simon**

Pen’s angry with me. I can tell by the way she refuses to sit next to me by the rail of the balcony and instead looms over me, hands on her hips, and blue hair swallowing the light of the Sun Palace up in blackness. It’s downright sinister.

“Simon.”

Here we go.

“You can’t keep doing this.”

I roll my eyes and stare back down to Micah’s family. His sisters are dressed for the solstice, hair all braided with ribbons and matching white dresses that are less stuffy-formal and more natural, comfortable. It’s a relaxed celebration, after all.

It’s a happy day for everyone below. The summer solstice marks the longest day of the year; the official beginning of summer. There’s a festival in town that Baz is going to, with feasts and picnics, music and dancing. He’s going to try to meet with Micah, something about starting a club for boyfriends of Celestial Beings. It’s a crucial day for me to stay up here in any case, so I am. Seriously this time. No funny business.

“I’m not going anywhere today, Pen.” I sigh.

“I’m not talking about just today, Simon. I’m talking about this last week—these last months! You can’t keep leaving to see him. You’re going to lose your job!”

“I thought you were the one who said they can’t fire us,” I spit out bitterly.

“Do you really want to take that chance?” she pleads.

“Yes.” I’m deadly calm when I say it and I meet her stare unflinchingly. “He’s worth every risk.”

“I just don’t want anything bad to happen to you—to us. Because I need you, too,” she says sadly.

I feel myself mellow a little. I’m so headstrong when it comes to Baz. But, it’s because every kiss feels like it could be our last. I want to fight. He brings out a passion in me buried beneath the coals. “I know, Pen. I know,” I whisper.

I notice Baz leaving his estate. Even his Aunt Fiona is going with him. She walks in equal strides with her husband, Nicodemus. They pile into a carriage, but Baz takes Ursa alongside them.

The ride to town isn’t that far away—a lot closer than the city where Baz’s university is, but it still takes them a little bit of time with the slow crawl of the carriage. I can see Baz shifting in Ursa’s saddle, growing impatient and itching to cut through the road at the terrifyingly fast speed that I know those two are capable of.

Pen leaves at some point, says she has to _follow the rules—_ another jab—and go back to the Lunar Palace. I should feel guilty. I don’t.

In the afternoon light, children play and run, holding onto long strings of ribbons whipping and twirling in the wind. Some are in weaving circles, others setting up for tea along with their picnics. The Summer Solstice is a day when all people, from all walks of life, come together; hence Micah and Baz who are currently sitting off to the side of the festival where flirting girls and boys stop, extending their hands out to Baz in probably an offer to dance.

Every time, though, another turns away from him and he shields his eyes, looks up at me, and smirks. Smug bastard. But I don’t get _too_ jealous. I know he’s mine, and I’m his.

* * *

 

Evening is approaching and Baz is slowly revolving out of my sight.

I never get tired of watching humans, especially Baz, but I feel so _bored_ right now because I know I’m missing out. If I didn’t have this duty, this much responsibility— _power—_ it could be me asking Baz to dance under the strings of flags hanging over the meadow, or me sneaking improper kisses behind the tree-line, or me sitting with him later to watch the bonfire piled up high with tinder. I wish I could see how it glows in the blackness of night—I’m never around that long on this side of Earth to see it, but Pen says it’s brighter than anything in the lands, like a star on Earth. Like what I must look like when I abandon my post and sneak down to see Baz.

I groan in frustration. I want to be with him. I feel my skin vibrating for his hands, his lips, his eyes. I want him to look at me without having to hide behind his hand. I want to hold him and lie with him under the stars while he teaches me new constellations and shows me again where Scorpius starts and where Libra’s scales hang.

He was so proud when I spotted out Orion by myself. We were lying down in a grassy patch in the middle of a meadow staring up at the sky. Afterwards he told me why it was so special and important for me to know it; that it was his first and how proud his mother was when he pointed it out to her, too. That night, I reached for his face, hooked my leg around his, and rolled on top of him, letting all the stars in the heavens know that I was _his_ star and only his star, and that nothing could take me away from him like so many of the people that he’d already lost.

Damn it. I can feel it again. That longing in my chest that drives me to leave. My heart feels heavy and being with him makes it feel lighter. I want to go to him. Night is almost here, and soon I won’t even be able to watch for him.

 

**Baz**

I hate festivals.

Mrs. Talbot, who made a full recovery from her hysteria over her carriage hitting a small bump—not even _close_ to Fiona’s report of her having gone off the road during the eclipse—tried to insist I bring my violin to play for everyone. And usually, I’d like the chance to show off a little, I practice every day, and perform at night and in the Darkness for Simon, but all I can think of is how my poor Simon is up there all alone watching the festivities and probably tormented and wishing he could be here with me. I wish he were here, too.

“You know, Penny told me that the first thing Simon said to her after the eclipse was, ‘I want him to be my boyfriend!’” Micah laughs.

I grin. Simon probably sees me grinning, but he can’t hear that we’re teasing him and that makes me smile even more. “Did he now?”

“I have to ask, Baz. Aren’t you two afraid Simon will get into trouble?”

“Simon’s invincible. He’s the bloody Sun. What would they do without him?”

“The Darkness has been happening a lot more lately. And I know that when it’s not happening here, it’s happening somewhere else on Earth. What happens when you two push the gods too far?”

“Then they can release Simon and let me have him down on Earth…”

“I tried that, Baz. I want Penny down here more than anything, but she was created for the Moon. She has a responsibility to it. They won’t just let their creation walk the Earth with all that power.”

I think for a moment, but my brain isn’t talking. My heart is taking the lead on this one. “Simon’s responsible, he’s just… Taking a few breaks every now and then.”

“Just be careful. Simon has more celestial importance than Penny, but it was still a pain trying to get the gods to compromise. I don’t know if they’ll even consider it with Simon.”

“Mic! Mic!” His youngest sister, adorable with ribbons in her hair and a white frock, comes bounding up to us and starts pulling on his hand. “They’re lighting the bonfire, come on!” She tugs, struggling to budge him with her full weight.

He looks to me and shrugs, “Big brother duty calls.”

I’m left standing under the tree. Fiona is in a drinking game with Nico and some of their friends from town. Micah and his family are gathered around the bonfire, and Simon is barely in the sky, so I start to walk in his direction where he’s setting because I’m hopeless and I just want the solstice to be over so I can have him again.

I’m busy brooding when a hand on my arm interrupts my thoughts.

“Hello, Basilton,” the young man greets sheepishly. I think his name is Walter. I just know he’s the eldest of the Harrington family. He’s basically one of the suck-ups from the university. I know he lives in the country, too, but we never speak outside of the lecture halls. “Care for a dance?” His hand slides down my arm and clasps onto my hand, pulling me back towards the festivities.

“My apologies, but I’m not in the dancing mood,” I say politely, trying to withdraw my hand. He’s persistent though. Not in an overly predatory way, but in a schoolboy with a crush that thinks the more he bats his lashes and smiles, the more I’ll fall for him out of his sheer willpower.

“A stroll, then?” he says and hooks his arm in mine, beginning to walk us forward along the stream.

His arm is keeping me captive and I’m trapped because he’s from an important family in society. He’s talking about law. He talks about law for another _fifteen_ minutes before he switches to economics. If I had my pistol, I’d be tempted to shoot my brains out. I keep glancing up at Simon, hoping he sees the irritation on my face and the exaggerated eye rolls when the schoolboy gets too absorbed in his self-importance.

“—Basilton?”

 I hope I can at least give Simon something to laugh at while he’s up there. Make my discomfort something amusing for him.

Just when I finally register my name from Walter and instinctively turn my face in his direction, he _kisses_ me.

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong—this feels wrong. He’s not burning, he’s not warm, he’s not my Sun. I push him away, eyeing him warily.

“D—did I misread?” he stutters. He’s stupid, but harmless. I decide to let him down easy.

“I’m truly flattered, but my heart belongs to another.”

“I… Yes. No, I apologize. I overstepped, I just thought—” I stop listening because behind him, I see that golden streak shooting down deep into the forest behind him. I hear the cheers of the people around the finally lit bonfire. Everyone’s too obsessed with their drink or the fire—or in this poor boy’s case, me and his embarrassment—to even notice that the Sun just set a lot faster than usual.

“Nope. All’s forgiven. Good day!” I say, turning around and running back to Ursa.

We tear into the trees searching for Simon’s glow.

 

**Simon**

What in the Goddess’s name was that about?!

I know it wasn’t Baz. I know it was that little prat from his school that follows him around the courtyard on the days Baz takes his reading outside to be near me. But still. It doesn’t stop the raging jealousy I feel because I’ve been stuck inside the bloody Sun _Prison_ all day with only Penny to come lecture me and shake her head in disapproval while I watch all the humans below socializing and having a good time.

It’s not _fair_. I’ve landed on the forest floor—I’m graceful at it now—when suddenly someone appears from behind a tree.

“Hello, Simon. Funny seeing you here. On the _Solstice_.”

“Agatha,” I grunt because I’m still overflowing with jealousy and pettiness.

“I hear you chased one of my bears away.”

“Your bear was trying to eat my boyfriend and his horse.”

“Boy-friend?” she asks.

“It’s what the humans call ‘lover.’”

“I don’t get involved with those, human or otherwise,” she says airily, leaning against a tree. “Why are you in my forest?”

“Just because there are trees, doesn’t mean it’s _your_ forest, Aggie.”

She smirks. “The forest houses my animals and by default my animals’ home belongs to me.”

I hear the gallop of Ursa’s hooves in the distance.

“Seems your ‘boyfriend’ is close by. Take care, Simon. Happy Solstice,” she says smugly because she _knows_ I’m not supposed to be here.

Baz is still a while away, but he and Ursa are gaining speed by the sound of it. He must see me lighting up the trees. I straighten out my clothes and cross my arms because pacing seems cliché and something I would usually do, but I’m at least attempting to make this seem like a casual visit; not because I was triggered and acting irrationally… _Fuck_ , I just left the Solstice.

“Simon!” Baz shouts to me, he and Ursa halt in front of me, and he swings off of her in one swoop, landing on his feet and immediately rushing to me. “What are you doing? It’s the Solstice still for the other half of the world! You’re going to get in troub—”

I practically jump on him, wrapping my arms around his neck and hugging him to me while I attack him with my mouth. Screw other humans, screw other gods, it’s just us now. It’s a clash of teeth and lips and I feel like I’m running hotter than usual and Baz’s cold is sending shivers down my spine, down my stomach, dipping lower until I feel electricity running through my body.

 

**Baz**

His lips are searing and his skin is scorching and I fucking _love_ it. When he lets off me, all I see is the sun in his eyes and feel my heart thudding in my chest. Kissing someone else was sickening and I just want to erase it with him. I pull him towards Ursa and help him up, me behind him in seconds, and we’re galloping through the night towards the estate. The wind is running against us, but everything is still so hot and I’m burning because he’s burning.

We speed up as soon as the house is in view and I leave Ursa in the garden to graze between the maze and the house. I know she won’t stray and I’m too busy giggling with Simon the way he makes me do, and I swear the noise makes him shine brighter. I lace our hands together and tug him towards the house. The servants are all at the festival, we’ve given them today and tomorrow off to celebrate and sleep off the party. Fiona and Nico will be too drunk to come back tonight, too.

So for tonight, it’s just me and Simon, tripping over steps because his other hand is yanking down my cravat and his mouth is on my collar bone. I still for a moment because I can’t register anything but his hot mouth on my neck, on my chest, but then he trips, nearly sending us flying down the steps, trying to get closer. I stop him and hold his face, whining, “J—just hold on, we’re almost there, love.”

He nods, panting, and I’m grinning like a fool in love as I pull him behind me to the top of the stairs and towards the double doors of my bedroom. As soon as we’re in, he’s on me again, kicking the door shut just to slam me up against it. This is it. This is how he ends me. In heat and passion and _fire_. This is going to end in flames, but I don’t care because they're his flames, and it’s Simon, and I will happily perish in him. But not here against the bloody door.

I groan and push him back towards the bed. He looks dazed, his blue eyes blackened and hungry. He sits on the edge and I stand between his legs, gripping and tugging his shirt up and up his gleaming, golden chest until he reaches up and helps tear it off, sending his curls wild in all directions.

I just stare at him, stunned by my beautiful star. In my bedroom and half-naked on my bed, setting the room aglow like we’re surrounded by dozens of candles.

He pulls me by my waistcoat and starts shredding it, buttons popping and rolling across the floor.

“You wear too many goddamn clothes,” he growls.

“Stop destroying my clothing,” I laugh, and I swear he shines brighter. I’m shrugging out of my jacket and pulling off layers in clumsy haste, when he pulls me down to him, capturing my lips and flipping me. I know he likes to do that, to make me gasp in surprise. He’s pushing me into my mattress, nipping at my bottom lip, dragging it back between his pearly, burning teeth because he’s a divine creation and everything about him, down to his bones, is magnificent and extraordinary.

I smirk when I draw a moan out of him by sliding my hand down his side, lower and lower. He grips my hair and everything is him _pulling_ and _dragging_ and bringing us close together on the mattress as possible. I steal breaths, short quick breaths when he lets up the slightest, but then he’s back on me again and I’m so light-headed, my head is buzzing, my body is humming, everything is Simon and Simon’s hands and Simon’s lips and Simon’s teeth and his burn.

Then he suddenly pulls away, suspended above me on all fours, gazing into my eyes then letting his own roam along my neck and down my chest like he can’t believe we’re here together.

We’re breathing hard, pupils blown wide, just gazing at each other in disbelief because he never thought he’d ever have someone to call his own and I never thought I’d feel so loved. I reach up for him and brush my thumb over his lips. He’s gorgeous and he’s mine, and I lift up onto my forearms and pull at his hair until he’s back on my mouth and we resume our dance, even more fevered and frenzied than before.

He pushes, I push back. He moans, I moan louder. He clasps our hands and pins it above my head, and I squeeze his hand as he makes me writhe in his heat.

He whispers things about how I’m beautiful and brilliant and darling while we move against each other desperately. I pant and cry that he’s my favorite star in all of the heavens and I’m his and only his. He tells me I’m the most special creature ever created, and I cry that I love him. He tells me to look at him and I do. I’ll do anything he says.

“I love you, Baz,” he gasps loudly, like he’s declaring it to the universe, like the day he practically declared to the bear that I was his human. “I love you _so_ , so much. You’re so perfect, so bloody perfect…” And I grip him to me, like I’m afraid the world is going to take him away from me. He buries his face in my neck and I hear my name spilling from his lips like a prayer. I claw at his back, pushing my body to him and it’s hot, it’s sweltering, I’m on fire, I taste his smoke along my tongue, I can’t breathe, I—

“I love you,” I whisper again and again.

I love him so much my heart bursts and everything is bright, blinding bliss.

* * *

 

It’s quiet, the crickets are alive because they think it’s night. I sleep with my curtains open so my Sun can see me, but he’s right here, in my arms and cheek pressed against my shoulder. He’s hugging me to him, the hand resting on my stomach moving back and forth, fingertips brushing over and over against it, leaving trails of fire underneath my skin.

I’m holding him, too. My thumb rubbing his thrumming skin in soothing circles, no longer blazing, but a delicate kind of heat. I thought for a moment that maybe he’d set us on fire, not that I cared much at the time; it was consuming like fire, I wanted to go up in it. I wouldn’t mind.

But we didn’t burn up, and now we’re cuddling, sweaty and boneless and so…

Happy. Nothing could ruin this moment for me, nothing could—

“Baz, you no good cur. You just take off, no word, and I’m looking for you and your bloody horse in the Darkness for…” Fiona’s got the door open because I didn’t lock it last night. I was too busy being pushed up against it.

I’m staring at her wide-eyed. Simon’s completely frozen at my side, as frozen as the sun can be.

And Fiona is staring at us with her mouth hanging open. Not because she caught me with a bloke in my bed, but because Simon is glowing like a golden god with hair glimmering and sparkling like the center of a fire as it usually does. He’s a glistening, twinkling living star and he’s naked under my sheets, in my bed, wrapped around my cool body.

“Why is he glowing, Basil?” she asks, borderline hysterical.

I just look at Simon, he meets my gaze and does the most Simon-thing he can do. He shrugs and that’s it. I clear my throat and turn back towards her and say,

“Fiona. This is my boyfriend, Simon. He’s the Sun.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Fi, he's glowing like a god, yeah, but I swear he's a cinnamon roll :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re just a fragile, delicate, temporary human...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Prepare yourselves.

**Baz**

I’ve done the impossible.

And I don’t mean shagging a star.

I’ve rendered Fiona Pitch wide eyed and completely speechless.

I know she’s downstairs prepping Nico for Simon’s introduction and probably busy in the kitchen getting things ready herself because she, one, left the doorway mumbling ‘tea’ over and over in shock, and two, the servants haven’t returned home yet. Which is great news for me and my divine, glowing lover.

Simon and I are about to leave the sanctity of my room, a place I’ll never be able to look at the same again now that I know how the light from his body leaves shadows on my walls, and how those shadows dance when he moves above me. Or, my bed and the way it feels to have it dip next to me with his weight, or the sound of its wood groaning and creaking when he’s close to completely losing himself in the feel of me.

I never want to let him out of this room. But, Fiona has questions and I owe Fiona answers. So now Simon’s dressed in something to cover more of his light for Fiona and Nico’s sake.

It takes us a while to get downstairs though. After I had thrust a bundle into his arms and told him to put them on, I busied myself with my own shirt then turned around and took one good look at him, my shirt hanging open against his bare chest, and my pants hanging low on his hips... It ended in me tearing them back off with my hands and teeth as I worshipped him all over again.

So, after an awkwardly long amount of time, we’re now heading down. And, while my hair was easy to fix, Simon’s curls are definitely announcing that we’ve just had sex again. Still, when I see Fiona, she looks monumentally calmer than she had before. Calmer than when I demanded some privacy with my usual sneer, and much more composed than she had looked when retreating like a gaping numpty from my doorway.

She looks down at our hands, threaded tightly together with his golden skin illuminating the flat, human shade of mine, as I lead Simon in all his bronze and shimmering glory towards the table in the parlour.

She picked the parlour for our little family meeting like Simon’s not the most magnificent thing in the universe; like he’s some gentleman caller instead of the living-Sun boyfriend whom I just shagged twice in my bedroom shamelessly. Her attempt at aggressive normalcy and control is destroyed by Nico in seconds, despite the prepping, as soon as he sees Simon.

“He’s fucking glowing, his skin is fucking—”

“Nicky, calm down,” Fiona says.

Nico laughs like a madman and says, “Baz, what the hell?”

“Do you want me… to?” I ask Simon lowly, gesturing to my family with my other hand.

He shrugs again but runs his thumb back and forth over my wrist. He’s not used to others, really. Just Penny and me—says it’s all formality and, ‘Yes, my Goddess,’ and ‘No, my Goddess,’ if he ever has to interact with people outside of us. Apparently, I was too tempting for him not to throw out his filter the night he saw me during the eclipse.

“Alright.” I sigh, leading Simon to the opposite side of the table. We sit, and I slowly drag out everything to buy myself some time to think. No strategy comes to mind, but bluntness does. I run with that. “So. The day of the eclipse, Simon and his friend Penny came down from the Sun and Moon to get some air on Earth…”

Fiona and Nico look at me like I’m a raving lunatic and Simon’s just a shared hallucination.

I clear my throat and continue, “But Simon got sidetracked and ended up in our garden instead.”

“So… _Simon_ … is from the Sun and the Moon?” Nico asks, voice strained.

“No, Pen’s from the Moon. I’m in charge of the Sun,” Simon finally speaks because duties and responsibilities, he knows how to navigate.

“So, you’re the Sun. Like, _the_ Sun. You control the light,” Fiona says to him. They’re questions, but she refuses to ever not have the upper hand in situations, so they sound like statements instead.

“Was that a question…?” Simon whispers to me, eyeing Fiona like he’s scared.

“Yes,” I answer for him. “He’s the reason why the Darkness has been happening. Because he leaves the Sun Palace and comes down to Earth.

“Sun… Palace,” she repeats.

“That’s _you?”_ Nico asks Simon. “You’re the reason it’s like this—” he waves to the Darkness outside the window where it should be morning light.

“When I leave the Sun Palace, there’s like… nothing powering it anymore?” Simon says.

Fiona narrows her eyes at me. “And I’m guessing _you’re_ the reason behind this.”

Simon rubs his thumb over my wrist again because we’re both guilty, but until now it’s just been Penny’s judgement and that was easy to ignore.

Nico groans, “Baz, don’t tell me you’ve known about the Darkness and haven’t said a damn word about it to us—”

“Fine! Yes! Okay?!” I snap because guilt is finally starting to gnaw at me under their scrutiny. “When Simon leaves the palace, it goes dark for us. Same for his friend Penny when she leaves the Moon and it goes dark for a few days, but no one gets on her case about it,” I grumble petulantly.

“Yes, Baz. Yes—because she’s the _Moon_ and Simon’s the bloody _Sun,”_ Fiona hisses.

“I love him,” I confess strongly. It feels so good to say it to them. I want to tell the world, but for now, Fiona and Nico will have to do.

Simon sheepishly dips his head towards mine and whispers to me, “I love you, too,” placing his other hand on our intertwined ones, and envelops my hand in heat.

“Seriously, Baz,” Fiona whines in disbelief, running a hand and pushing her white streak back. “This is the guy you’ve been all lovesick about—the _Sun_?”

I shrug and drawl, “You always said that Pitches should be selective.”

Fiona and Nico stare dumbfounded for a moment then at nearly the same time, Fiona covers her eyes, a grin spreading on her face while Nico lets out a roar and hugs Fiona close to him.

“For fuck’s sake, Baz. When I made fun of you for wanting to snog the stars, I didn’t think you would go through all the trouble and actually find a way to _do it_ ,” she smirks.

I finally crack a smile. I turn and see Simon’s already smiling a little, too, and blushing under all that golden glow. But the temporary madness dies down and we’re left with five million and one things to talk about and no one wants to open the floodgate yet.

“Erm… Mind if I have some tea?” Simon asks shyly. He likes to eat when he’s nervous, it gives him something else to focus on than all the fire running rampant through his veins in anxiety.

“Only if you give me some answers,” Fiona says with a quirk of her eyebrow.

I feel Simon hesitate next to me. I roll my eyes, pour him some tea and practically shove it up to his mouth. “Stop trying to scare my boyfriend.”

“I’m not trying to scare him. If he’s scared, that’s his own fault.”

Simon swallows the whole cup in one go.

“This is serious, Baz. What you two have been doing is…” Nico trails off.

“The whole world is being affected by your… _relationship.”_ Fiona continues, “Simon, you’re the Sun.”

Simon stops drinking the second cup I’ve given him and answers cautiously, “Yes?”

“You’re one of the gods then.”

“No. They made me though. Me and Pen.”

“So, you’re not going to live forever. If you’re not a god.”

Simon tenses. This is something we’ve only skirted the edge of in conversation, both unwilling to admit the harsh reality of it all.

“I’m not—well, I mean, I _can_ live, uh, forever... I’m not supposed to expire…” I hate it when he talks about himself like that. I can practically hear the callous and cold voices of his makers. _Expire_. Like he’s a commodity and not the reason I wake up to face the new day, his day.

“Baz is human,” she says. “Surely you understand where I’m going with this line of logic.”

I look down at our hands, tightening onto each other. I know I’m just a human. I know I won’t live forever, but I just figured I’d live it with Simon as long as someone so powerful and extraordinary as him… well, _wanted_ me, I guess.

“I don’t understand why you don’t just bring Baz up to your, um, palace, was it?” Nico asks. “Would save the Earth a lot of trouble. The Darkness and all.”

“Baz wouldn’t be able to survive it. And Pen and I can’t use our magic like that. I wouldn’t be able to bring him up there even if he _could_ still live with all the energy running off the palace.”

Fiona’s nearly transformed into a narrow-eyed cat. I can practically see her tail whipping back and forth, and I know what she’s doing. This is her version of protecting me—shattering dreams and my feelings and Simon’s if she deems it necessary. She’s well-intentioned, but _this_ Fiona is usually accompanied by a headache on my end. When she opens her mouth, I cut her off.

“Don’t.”

“I’m just wondering—”

“Stop.”

“—if he cares about you this much—”

“Fiona, I swear to the gods. I will march out of this house and never come back.”

“Oh, and where will you go, Basil? _The sky_? Because Simon’s already made it perfectly clear that you can’t live up there and that he’s not going to _expire_ and that you’re his human infatuation.”

“He’s not an infatuation!” Simon yells.

“He’s going to die someday,” she yells back. “Because that’s what us humans _do_. We die. You two are on borrowed time because the world has literally been plunged into darkness. Everything’s going to shit because of this. How long until things go from a slight bother to deadly consequences?!”

“What Fi’s saying is that… If the Darkness really has been Simon spending time on Earth with you, Baz, then this last month has been out of control. What happens when people revolt?”

“Uprisings—society crumbles—the crops keep dying, or don’t even grow to begin with!”

I feel Simon’s hand go limp in mine and it almost feels like I’m losing him already. My chair screeches backwards as I shoot up onto my feet, pulling Simon up with me.

“We’re not staying here,” I announce. “Come on, Simon.”

He stares at me bewildered as I charge from the room with him, my star, brightening the darkness in our path.

“Baz! Do not walk away from me!” Fiona shouts, trailing after us.

“I don’t get a lot of time with Simon as it is, I’m not _wasting_ his visit on an interrogation and a lecture.”

“She’s right though…” I don’t expect to hear that come from Simon, his voice small and full of defeat.

“What are you on about?” I huff.

He’s about to say something more when a gust of blue sparkle and dust hits the pavement outside the window.

“Simon!” Pen calls, looking around the Darkness wildly.

 

**Simon**

I see Pen’s panicked face. I’ve never seen her this scared before.

I don’t let go of Baz’s hand; instead, dragging him out of the house with me. We immediately run out to her.

“Pen! Pen, I’m here, what’s wrong? What are you doing here?”

“Simon,” she gulps. Her hands are shaking, she’s so anxious.

It can only mean one thing.

“Where are they?” I ask seriously.

“They’re at the Palace. We have to go. _Now_. Come on!”

I turn to Baz, Fiona and Nico are a few paces behind us. All three of them are taking in Penny and her blue hair and ethereal glow. This is the first time Baz gets to put her face to her name, and she’s _scared_. This isn’t how I imagined this going.

“Baz, I have to go.” I kiss him on the cheek and grip his shoulder with my free hand. “I’ll be back later. I promise.”

He kisses me again, hard and unrelenting as he reaches up to tug my face closer to his. I want to stay, I want to stay under his cold lips, but I have to go, and I have to go now.

I pull away, “I promise! Tonight. I’ll be back!”

He lets go of my hand and I jump back to Pen. In an instant, we’re up, miles away from Baz and his family.

When we land at the Sun Palace, I see an assortment of gods—women, men, those who are beyond—and immediately, I get down on one knee and bow my head as I was created to do. Pen bows next to me and I'm still in Baz's clothes.

I’m in deep shit. I can feel it rattling in the bones they forged for me.

“Penelope,” a god with a headdress of bones addresses.

“My God,” she answers.

“Simon,” a goddess speaks. She doesn’t wait for my response; just stands upright in her layers of pink and yellow dress billowing as if there’s a perpetual wind around her. “You have a duty, Simon. And, you’ve violated it.”

“Please, my Goddess, it’s just a mistake—” Pen tries to speak for me.

“Penelope, we were lenient in your situation due to your circumstances; circumstances that Simon does not have the luxury of sharing,” someone else speaks from the line-up. The dread making me nauseous distracts me from seeing who it is.

“Is it because of the Solstice?” I ask and immediately begin pleading, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have left, but—”

“But you’re in love with a human,” another god spits. He presents himself underneath wrinkles and age lines with white hair that spills onto his shoulders. “It’s abominable!”

“Do not judge so hastily,” another says. They have kinder eyes set in a lithe body shorter than mine. But I’m still kneeling beneath them, so they downcast their pity when they look at me next. “There are many a human we have each come to care for, Simon. But they do not last long. They do not live as we do. They are fragile, delicate, and ultimately, temporary.”

I rise to my feet, my stance strong and chin held defiantly up.

“Si, _no_ ,” Pen whispers to me. I know what she’s trying to say. Baz is only human. He will die one day and I will live on. Fiona is right. The authority speaking to me is right. Everyone is bloody right, but I don’t care.

“And humans are a distraction!” the same gruffy god scoffs. “Simon cannot perform his duties as long as this human is allowed to live—”

“No!” It rips through my throat before I have a chance to stop it. They won’t hurt him. I won’t let them. I will use all my power and fight, tear apart, burn, and _kill_ any creature that gets in the way of him living a long, happy life... Even if it’s without me.

“We can use reason. We do not need to resort to taking the human’s life,” someone else speaks calmly.

“He has a point though,” the tallest goddess of them all says. She’s the Queen of the Gods. What she says goes, and if she says Baz has to die then that means I better start firing up for a fight.

She approaches the front of the line, staring directly into my eyes. I can feel how furious and untamed mine must look. It must not be helping my case.

“The terms are simple, Simon. Your human will be allowed to live under your gaze. However, you are not to leave the Sun Palace again. For if you do, you will violate this contract, and we will not hesitate to kill the human.”

 _No_.

“Order,” she continues, “is sustained by the Earth creatures’ reliance that you rise in their east and set in their west. It’s a cycle that should never falter. The world of humans cannot live in an endless night when only one human gets to bask in the Sun.”

“Enough! Kill the human and he’ll have no temptation!”

“Please!” I hear myself begging, “Please, just… Just leave him alone, let him live a full life, and I’ll do whatever you want. Don’t hurt him, and I will stay here. I won’t leave, just _please_ don’t kill him because of me.” I’m on the verge of spilling tears.

The divine being who spoke of humans being objects of our care, our affection—but ultimately, not everlasting—comes forward, passes the Queen, and places a slender hand on my shoulder. 

“I know you have a burden to bear, young one. But you were chosen. And, you must fulfil your duty to the world.”

“P—please,” I plead to them with my stinging eyes. “I just need to see him one more time.”

“Absolutely out of the question!” I hate that old god more than I’ve ever hated anything before.

I look back at them, the compassionate one holding my shoulder and say, “I _promised_ him I would be back. He’s waiting for me. If I’m never going to see him again, I want him to know that, so he stops. So he can move on. Please—please let me tell him not to wait.”

I think I’m crying now. I can’t tell. I’m too terrified of the idea of Baz waiting for me every day for the rest of his life, until he’s frail and gray, staring up at the Sun with heartbreak in his eyes. I couldn’t bear that. I’d rather expire.

Because if I don’t tell him, he’ll keep loving me. And, I know he will. Until the day he dies… Unless I do something.

I try to convey this all in my stare. They pull back from me and look to the Queen.

“Your Grace,” is all they say, but their tone says it all. I pleaded to the right god(ess). They have the most sway over the Queen.

The Queen looks to me with calm indifference and says, “Granted. But,” she pauses, “not for seven cycles.”

I splutter, “Seven days?! I promised him I would come back tonight!”

“Think of it as time to collect your thoughts. To decide on the best course of action outside of your… passion.”

I know if they could resurrect me without all my ‘passion’, they would. But the Sun needs fire, and fire is consuming. It eats energy and radiates it tenfold.

She stands taller and repeats, “Seven cycles. And only to say goodbye. Penelope, you’re charged with bringing him back.”

“Yes, my Queen.”

“Very well. We expect to see the Sun shining again at _all_ times, yes, Simon?”

I nod, but I don’t tear my eyes from the floor. The kinder god(ess) still has their hand on me. In ripples of light, their hand disappears. They’re all gone, and it’s just me and Pen.

She takes a step towards me and I shatter. I’m on the palace tile and heaving sobs that don’t sound nearly as broken as I feel, but Pen is next to me, wrapping her arms around me, trying to hold me together. Soon I hear her crying, too.

“I’m sorry, Simon. I’m so sorry…” her voice cracks as she repeats it over and over.

I don’t stop crying for those seven cycles.

 

* * *

 

**Baz**

I waited outside.

Fiona and Nico stared in awe as Simon and Penny sped away until we couldn’t make them out anymore. Then the sky brightened and daylight returned.

They tried to usher me into the house for more questioning now that we were alone—“Just us humans,” Fiona said. I told them I was going to wait outside. I wanted Simon to know that whatever was happening, I would be right here, waiting for him, out where he could watch for me.

The day passed with my stilted answers to Fiona’s questions. She had waited with me outside until night fell.

“Are you sure he’s coming tonight?”

“If he leaves, it’ll be no difference to us now. If he’s on the other side of the world, the Darkness will just fall over them. I just have to wait. He looks like a shooting star when he falls. You can’t miss him.”

“Well, come wait inside then. You’ll catch a cold and start wheezing, and then your star-boyfriend won’t be able to make heart eyes with you,” she teases. That cold, hard exterior she put on earlier in front of Simon dissipated after the sun set. After that, it was just me, watching the stars and looking for the dark moon (Penny must be with him still), while she stared at me with growing pity.

“He’d still make heart eyes with me,” I say defiantly.

“Baz. We know about him. When he comes, he’ll just knock on the door. Come on,” she insists.

“What about the servants?”

“You two have sneaked around for months. If he can’t figure a way around the servants, he’s a bloody numpty. Now hurry up.”

She has a point.

I look up once more at the starlight. There’s still no Moon. Penny is with Simon and that makes me feel better, but I’m still nervous. And, so I wait in my room until the sun—until Simon comes up.

He’s there at the palace, and I’m here, and he didn’t come, and he promised… And, now I’m more worried than before.

* * *

 

It’s been days. I think three? It’s hard to tell because I’m not sleeping properly. Fiona keeps checking in on me, asking if he’s come. I keep having to tell her no.

Part of me fears the worst. The first two days it was fear that he’s not allowed to come back. That was the most logical, made the most sense with Penny’s expression and warning. The days after that, though, the worst voices in my head started telling me he just didn’t _want_ to come back. Or maybe that I wasn’t important enough to keep up the promise that he’d be back soon.

I mean, we always knew it would eventually come down to the world or me.

Why would he pick just little, unimportant me?

But then I remember our night together—when he said he loved me and whispered it across my skin. It’s all I can hear in my dreams. And, I know he meant it.

Simon means everything he says.

But, he also said he’d be back days ago and hasn’t shown himself…

I’m so confused, and I’m worried, and I miss him because we made a huge mistake. We were terrible and went from stealing moments together every couple of weeks to every other day… Now I’m so used to him breaking rules for me. He’s up there, shining in the sky though.

So, why won’t he break the rules for me now?

* * *

 

It’s been six… maybe seven days? I don’t know. I’m exhausted. I feel drained from panic that won’t fade.

I’m afraid of sleeping too long during the day like I might miss the sky beginning to turn dark, like I’ll miss seeing him floating down to me. But, I’m also afraid of sleeping at night and not seeing where he streams down and lands on the grounds, so I can run to him.

I miss him. I miss my Simon so much it feels like my heart is falling apart without him.

Fiona’s stopped asking if he’s come. I think she can see how upset I get when I have to shake my head solemnly at her. They’ve been having the servants send me up my meals. I barely pick at them.

I’ve stopped going to my lectures this week, too.

I can’t stomach any tutorials with my classmates, talking about the stars without wanting to breakdown because my favorite one won’t come to me.

I’ve lost my charm. None of the ‘thoroughbred trollops’ wanted to talk to me. On Monday, it was all, “Are you alright, Basilton?” By Wednesday, everyone was steering clear of the dark clouds hanging above me. But I don’t blame them. I barely put myself together the three days I showed up, looking like an utter mess, and kept my head hung low in the halls—wherever I walked in-doors, where my Sun couldn’t see me.

What would my father say of me now? Letting a Grimm-Pitch fall to shambles this far. I don’t care though because it’s not like he’s here. He gave up on me. And he, mum, and Dev were taken from me, and now Simon is, too—

I want to cry, but I’m really trying not to.

Because Simon’s going to come back—

No, he isn’t—

Yes, he is—

no—

yes—

I storm out onto my balcony that overlooks the grounds and slam my hands down on the railing, gripping them until my skin pales against my knuckles. I just need to _know_. I need to know what to expect, what I have to prepare for, what I need to survive. I’ve lived my whole life in control, and right now nothing is making sense because I don’t know where Simon is, or what he’s doing, or what he’s thinking, and if he’s still loving me enough to stop the world.

I want to cry.

I’m going to cry.

I let out a shuddering breath, but it catches because I _see_ him. He’s falling into the maze and I _run_.

I barrel down the staircase, slipping down a few and landing hard on my bent ankle, but I ignore the pain and just keep moving; I keep making a mad dash towards the garden. I fly through the maze I have memorized, clawing at the hedge walls as I swing myself around corners like a maniac until I see him standing on my mother’s memorial piece, staring at the tiles reverently.

“Simon!” I cry out.

I fling myself at him, capturing him in my arms and burying my face in his shoulder, trying with every last drop of strength and willpower not to finally cry, even if in relief. After a long moment—too long—he wraps his arms around my waist. It takes a few seconds more for him to pull me closer and to nuzzle his face into my hair.

He’s not usually this careful. He loves like fire; blazing, scorching wildfire that cannot be contained. But right now, he’s just smoldering. He’s all subdued smoke. Something’s wrong.

I lean back and I know my face is revealing everything because I’m so tired and I can’t pretend with him anyway. For the smallest moment, he has some emotion, but before I can piece together what it is exactly, he makes eye contact with me and immediately hardens.

I don’t know this Simon.

“Simon,” I try to coax the warm star I fell in love with out of him, but he cuts me off.

“I don’t have much time,” he says coldly. “I just wanted to tell you not to wait for me anymore.”

“What? Why not?”

“I have a duty. A duty that exceeds this… fling,” he spits out, “between us.”

I feel like I’ve been stabbed through the heart. “Simon…” I’m so confused. I don’t understand what he’s saying and I’m so tired, it’s even murkier.

“This was never going to work,” he states. Then he smirks in a way that makes my stomach churn. “Didn’t you realize that?”

“No.” I try to swallow, but my throat is dry. “You don’t mean that. I know you don’t.”

“I’m sorry I let this go on for so long. It wasn’t fair to you.” He still has the ghost of that terrible smirk on his face. Like this is amusing. It’s cruel, and cold, and _not_ my Simon. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m going now. And if I come back, it’s not going to be for you.”

“I _know_ you love me, Simon.”

He snorts and pushes me away from him. “You’re _human_. You’re just a _fragile_ , _delicate_ , _temporary_ human. And, I’m of the gods—”

He doesn’t sound like himself. He sounds like _them_. His bosses, those monsters that stuck him alone in a palace in the sky his entire existence.

I tell him that, but he steps over it.

“We had something fun, you and I. You were a nice distraction. But I’m bored of this game,” he says with a shrug.

My better sense is telling me this is wrong. But, every other dark, menacing voice in my head is repeating his words in my mind. “…a distraction?” I whisper.

“Just a distraction.”

“This isn’t right—”

“I’m sorry, but I’m bored of this, of you,” he says it with the mockery of an apology. That stupid, vicious smirk is still twisting his lips and I can’t stand it.

I’m staring at him and I know I look as hollow as I’m starting to feel. His light looks dimmer, too. Or maybe I’m just realizing that reality isn’t a fantastic fairytale where I get to be with someone as miraculous as him.

“I love you,” I try.

“It _was_ sweet. Wasn’t it? But, I pity you. I finally realized how serious this all was for you. This has to end. For your sake, Baz,” he says offhandedly.

I don’t like this. I don’t like him like this. I want emotion. I want fire. I want Simon, so I argue, “You said you loved me.”

“Not the way you love me apparently.” Then he drawls slowly like I’m thick, “You’re human. We don’t match.”

“You told me… you said you would stop the world for me,” I whisper hoarsely because my heart is breaking, and I think I feel something wet hit my lip.

“And, I’m so sorry you actually believed that.”

I feel the dagger twist, ripping heart chambers, shredding sinew and leaving a broken, barely beating, bloody mess hanging in my chest.

I can’t drag my eyes away from him, no matter how monstrous that haughty twist on his lips looks on him. He apparently can though. There’s something more interesting than a broken, insignificant human capturing his attention up behind me. He closes his eyes for a lingering second, then opens them right at me, fixed with a steely leer that looks so, so wrong.

If this is the last time I see him, I don’t want to remember him this way.

I want to remember my laughing, grinning-like-a-clueless-idiot Simon as he tosses his head back while we ride Ursa through the night. Not this unfeeling creature…

No matter how beautiful he still is to me.

“I’m leaving,” he says and takes a step back, looking up at the moonless night.

“Please, wait, Simon, tell me what’s going on. Something’s not right. This isn’t right. Tell me what’s wrong and I can—”

“I won’t be watching for you anymore, Baz.”

Then he’s swarming in stardust, like a contained golden blizzard around his body, and up he flies until I’m left in darkness. Alone. In my dead mother’s garden that my dead father built before he died of a broken heart.

In this moment, I don’t blame him as much as I used to.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, lovelies. Maybe leave a thought below? ... :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Stop apologizing. Stop begging. And Pitch the hell up—"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really having fun writing this story :) and I've planned to extend it by another chapter. Hope that's alright, but I think it needs a proper epilogue. Thanks so much for reading!

**Penny**

I signaled Simon from the sky and he obediently left Baz there in the garden. Like the good, dutiful little soldier the Gods created him to be.

We landed at the palace and without a word, he moved from the balcony and into the shaded room inside—he’d thrown tapestries over the windows of his bedroom days ago.

“Si?” I call out, but he’s already crawling to the middle of his bed and curling himself into a ball. “Are you okay?” It’s a stupid question, I know, but I just need him to show something—anger, irritation, sadness, heartache... He’s had that steel cold expression since he first pulled away from Baz’s embrace and said all that he had to make Baz hate him.

“I’m tired. I’m going to sleep,” he says, void of anything.

“Simon, you’ve been sleeping all week already—”

He turns his head back to me, finally, with a resentful glare and snaps, “Well they don’t need me to be awake. They just need me to be here.” He turns back around and wraps his arms around himself tighter.

I’ve never felt this guilty about not being as important as he is. I’ve never felt this sorry for not being as powerful as him.

Because he’s the Sun. And I’m just the Moon. And he sustains life for all creatures and he can’t even have the one human that he wants to keep shining for.

Damn them. Damn this place.

It’s a prison; the Lunar Palace is a prison, too. Everything we could ever want except freedom to friends, family, or love. He’s right. And, if it weren’t for the gods not caring so much about me, he wouldn’t even have me to visit from time to time.

* * *

 

**_Back to the present_ **

 

**Penny**

After seeing how much Simon was allowed to get away with these last few months, I’ve become emboldened to visit him as much as I want. I’ve realized that as long as Simon is a threat, I’m not as much of one to the bosses.

I caught him today breaking the promise he made to Baz about not watching for him. His eyes were glossed over though which meant he couldn’t see him. Simon’s always more alert when he sees Baz. He was probably staring down at Baz’s room, all the curtains drawn. Everything’s been open for months, but now he’s been hiding from Simon. I can’t help but think this is for the best though. I think seeing him so soon would be too much for Simon. He’s shifted his chin, pretending that he’s surveying the land as a whole.

“This is nice,” I say, sitting next to him behind the railing. “You’ve been cooped up for the last few days.”

He shrugs.

“You know the humans have a holiday today. They’re putting up streamers in town,” I say.

“I don’t care.”

“But you love watching their festivals—”

“I. Don’t. Care. Penny. I don’t care about any of them. I don’t shine for them because I _want_ to. They can all live in darkness for all I care.”

“You’re the most important thing in their sky. They live because of you,” I say, trying to remind him how important he is, how needed. “Without you, everything dies—the Earth can’t thrive without you, and neither can its creatures. You’re the only being in existence who has that kind of power. They need you.”

He doesn’t seem fazed by my speech. It’s not glowing him up like it used to whenever he’d get a little lonely, before he even knew Baz existed.

“Life itself needs you. Without your duty, nothing survives...” I sigh. “Baz doesn’t survive. He’s human. Baz needs you, too.”

“Huh?” he asks. That alertness is back, even if just a little.

“Baz loves his family. You love Baz. By that reasoning, you can’t tell me that you just don’t care at all about humans anymore,” I say. I’m doing my best to be delicate about this, but I don’t like him like this. I wish I could just snap him out of it, make him smiling and shining again. I’ve noticed he seems dimmer and the palace doesn’t glare into my eyes as much.

“Baz loves me,” he mumbles under his breath. I barely hear it. I slide off my chair and onto the tile next to him, turning my gaze to the world now.

“I know he does, Si… I’m sorry. I’m sorry that it can’t be me here and you the Moon, instead. If there was any way to share it, or trade, I—”

“No,” he says sternly. “I’d never let you give up Micah for me.”

He’d never let me feel the way he does right now because Simon is my truest friend and a hero even when he’s broken.

I whisper, guilt churning my stomach, “But now I have to watch you give up Baz.”

He waves his hand and looks back to Baz’s part of the land. I know what he’s gesturing at. The curtains.

“He’s already given up on me,” he says. “But… I guess that’s for the best, yeah?”

Every part of me wants to contradict him. That I saw and heard everything between the two of them that night and that I know Baz didn’t believe Simon, as hurt as he was. He was just confused and scared. But what’s the point in arguing now? Nothing can change.

I swear I see Simon flicker and the Sun Palace seems dimmer for a moment, too. But I can never tell, this place leaves spots in my sight.

He groans, head falling against the banister with a loud thud, “Why did we ever think the eclipse was a good idea?”

I don’t have an answer for him, not one I can say at least. Because the real answer is that we thought it was a safe idea because we never expected Simon would actually fall in love. That Simon would ever meet a human as extraordinary as Micah is to me—someone worth challenging even the gods for.

 

**Baz**

I’ve stopped counting days. I’ve stopped going outside completely. Poor Ursa has to share Nico’s attention with the others in the stable now, but if Simon’s not in the sky, chances are Penny is and I know I look wretched. I took down the mirrors in my room because every time I caught my own eye, I cringed at that haunted, gray dullness staring back at me; how pallid my face is now; how _weak_ and feeble I look. I look pitiful. I looked like my father.

Speaking of family, I’ve ignored all of Fiona’s knocking on the door and her commands from the other side to open it, too. I answer just enough to assure her I’m not dead and to leave me alone, but the more I isolated and missed my lectures, the more she pounded. Even Nico’s tried to have a heart to heart with me. I tuned him out when he leaned against the outside of the door, just talking, hoping it would comfort me or something. Nothing’s comforting.

So, now here I am, probably two months since I’ve been broken up with and everything’s still shit.

And I know Simon loved me. Maybe he was telling the truth about not loving me as much as I loved him because I’m just a human; a clingy, insecure mess who’s a magnet for death and an arrogant prick on my good days. I look like hell. And I can’t focus, so there goes my intellect, the last thing I had going for me.

I hear a rattling in the still darkness before my door slams open with a bang against the wall. Fiona’s looking venomous and stubborn with a long letter opener in her hand. She jimmied the lock? What a cliché. I groan and pull my pillow over my face.

“Take that pillow off your face before I change my mind and smother you with it,” she barks.

I drag it down, peeking over the top. I can’t even properly glare at her, I’m just… existing.

She marches over to the curtains and pulls them wide open and for the first time in weeks, I can see orange and pink painting the sky as the sun sets on the other side of the house. He can’t see me, I breathe a sigh of relief.

“You’ve been moping for two months, Baz,” she snarls, pushing up the window and yanking open the balcony doors to let air in.

It should be refreshing, but it just makes me cold, and when I’m cold I remember that I’m never going to feel him, and then I feel pathetic all over again.

I burrow deeper under my blankets. She rips those off too.

“Fuck, Fi.”

“You’re going to bathe, get dressed, and attend the Harrington’s ball with me and Nickels.”

“You’ll have just as much fun drinking punch with Nico as you would me,” I sigh, trying to pull my covers back up. I want warmth. She doesn’t let me have it and tears them back out of my grasp.

I curl into myself on my side and press my face as far into my pillow as I can without suffocating myself.

“Stop being pathetic and get up.”

“Just let me sleep. _Please._ ”

“ _Please_?!” she shrieks. “ _Please_?! Pitches don’t beg, Baz.”

“Then maybe it’s the Grimm in me,” I mumble. I’m so tired. I’m pitiable to everyone but Fiona.

“Yes, it must be, but I’ll be damned if I let you wither away like Malcolm did. Now, up!”

She grabs me by my shoulders and pulls me up. If I was in my right mind, I’d slap her hands away, but I just let myself be dragged upright like a rag doll and meet her eyes when she bends down to my level. _Stoops_ down to my level.

“I don’t know what happened because you avoided us before you decided to just give up on everything all together and lock yourself away—”

She’s making me feel worse.

“But I'm guessing you and Simon aren’t together anymore because the Darkness is gone.”

“…Yes,” I say. It hurts to hear his name outside of my whispers for him in the middle of the night.

“We’ve given you space. And time. But it’s been _two_ months and if I hadn’t broken in here, it probably would’ve been another.”

“I’m sorry,” I say because I am. I’m sorry for myself and sorry for being this way and sorry for making her worry because I know that underneath our bickering, Fiona loves me and I’ve been making her worry.

“Stop apologizing. Stop begging. And  _Pitch_ the _hell_ up,” she says and ruffles my hair. “I shouldn’t have done that. It’s disgusting. Go _bathe_ , Baz.” She crosses to my wardrobe and begins examining everything inside, quickly laying pieces over her arm, then turns around.

I stare after her and I know I look lost and hollow.

Despite what she said and the way she rolls her eyes, she softens a little and says curtly, “Bathe. Please.”

She’s stooping down to my level again. I’m just dragging everyone into my tragedy.

* * *

 

I’m surprised when I turn the mirror around to brush my hair. I look like a gentleman again, even with my hair grown out and brushing my shoulders now. It actually looks better. I wonder if _he’d_ like it.

I try to practice a smile and it comes out decently. I can pass for the night as long as I try to keep to myself.

That’s nearly impossible when we arrive because everyone is fawning over me and inquiring about my absence.

“Basilton!” Lord Harrington greets me. “My son has told me you haven’t been at the university. Did you fall ill?”

I’m stunned for a moment because this is the most conversation I’ve had in two months.

Fiona cuts in.

“Basil was out of town, visiting his aunt and uncle. I’m sure you remember their late son, Devin.”

“Oh, yes. Such a tragedy, such a shame,” the man replies. “Basilton, why don’t you track down that son of mine. Have him show you about the estate.”

“Yes, sir,” I say and chance a small smile.

“Good man,” he says, clapping me on the shoulder and all but shoves me in the direction of his son across the room. I start walking forward, but quickly cut through the crowd and skirt along the edges of the ballroom looking for a way outside.

“Oh, it’s Basilton—Basilton! We all but thought you had died,” one of the girls from town giggles. I get stuck repeating Fiona’s excuse, that I went to visit family by the seaside and loved the scenery so much, I extended my trip.

“We were worried the Darkness had swallowed you up,” another laughs. I try not to wince. I didn’t want to think of him tonight.

“So strange, all that business. Wasn’t it?

“Have you had the punch yet?”

“I love this dance! Basilton, do you enjoy dancing?”

My mouth is dry, and I can feel my pulse picking up when I hear a familiar voice. “Excuse me, ladies,” says Walter Harrington, the very soul I was set on avoiding, “But I need to borrow Basilton.”

The four of them whine and protest, but Walter already has my arm hooked and is steering me towards another room then out through the doors on the far side where the cool air hits me. For the first time in months, I’ve never felt so relieved to feel the chill.

I take in a deep breath and then a glance at him.

“I sensed you needed rescuing,” he says. I’m so embarrassed that I’m almost offended. I look back at the lake across from us. It’s a full moon out tonight, Penny’s in the sky.

If I said that, Walter would never understand it. I’d sound crazy. Maybe I am, but after trying so hard to convince myself it all wasn’t real, I realized it’s impossible. I’m cursed to know things no human should know.

Walter pulls a flask out of the inside pocket of his coat. “Gin?”

I smirk, and it feels so good to be on my lips again. I can pretend. I can be who I used to be.

“I had no idea you had any vices, Walter.”

“You’ve met my father,” he smiles, takes a long swig then offers it to me.

“Thanks,” I say and nearly let myself drown in the whole thing. He stares at me wide-eyed. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “What? Can’t keep up, Harrington?”

He smiles sheepishly and takes a drink as long as I mine was.

* * *

 

My eyes are crinkling and an ugly laugh soars through me as I lean onto him for support. He’s wheezing, hand on my shoulder, the other on a real bottle of gin that we snuck from the other room and have been sharing.

I don’t even know what I’m laughing about anymore, but it’s the first time I’ve felt something other than heartache. It’s still there though, but it’s laying at the bottom of a sea of gin and Walter’s warmth as he huddles next to me.

I’m so cold right now and I’m so drunk that I can pretend this is Simon’s heat next to me as long as I don’t look at him or hear him talk.

 

**Penny**

The estate by the lake is at maximum capacity. People are spilling in and out and it’s glowing brighter than anything in the area. That’s when I see Baz sitting outside with some boy.

 

**Baz**

I’m feeling stupid and desperate. I know Penny could see if she wanted. I close my eyes so I don’t have to see Walter and latch my lips onto his neck. He gasps, but doesn’t pull away. I slide my hand alongside his face and bury it in his hair. It’s short, straight, and thin. There’s barely anything for me to grab onto.

I imagine thick locks with strands that leave fine lines of fire across my skin, bronze strands that curl through and around my fingers.

 

**Penny**

I lean further off my own balcony, as if I can’t see them in perfect detail already.

Because Baz just kissed another boy.

 

**Baz**

“B—Basil—” he begins to say, but I let off and pull his face down to mine, slamming my lips against his. I don’t want him to speak.

I imagine laughs that ring deep and round like bells. My name rough and raspy on _his_ tongue.

We hear a gasp followed by giggles behind us because we’ve been spotted. I lean back, hand still gripping his hair and stare at his lips because if I look into his eyes, it’ll be over and I might vomit the gin, trying to dispel my heart from me, too.

“S—shall we go somewhere more private?” he stammers. I close my eyes and push his voice out of my head, nodding furiously. He probably thinks I did that because I’m consumed with lust. I did it because I’m desperate to hold onto my little fantasy.

I stumble a little as I get up with him, but he steadies me then leads me around the outside of the house to go through the kitchens. The servants look at us briefly, but no one says anything as he leads me through empty, dark hallways until we’re in a room. Walter’s room.

I’m in a daze, starting to lose whatever I just had, so I press him against the wall and clash my lips and teeth with his.

He doesn’t match me.

And he’s going too slowly. I push into him harder, trying to draw something primal and fiery out of him, but he’s all cool, languid strokes of his tongue and soft touches.

I want fire. I want heat and roughness like his passion is going to devour us both. I want to see the soft glow from behind my closed eyelids like he’s firelight shining in the darkness.

But it’s not. It’s cold. Slow. Dark. And nothing’s right. Nothing is ever going to feel right.

“Basil?” he asks. I didn’t realize I had stopped, that I had pulled my lips away. My head is tilted down and away from him.

I know it now. I’m ruined. _He_ ruined me forever. I frolicked with the Gods and now mortality feels like a curse and humans pale in comparison.

I feel terrible for using Walter to discover this.

“Is it him?” he asks and my head jerks up. I’m looking at him like a gaping fool until I remember that’s what I told him at the festival. That my heart belonged to another and I was so caught up in me and _him_ —coming together, then coming apart for each other that night—that I completely forgot I’d broken Walter’s heart.

I always knew I was selfish. I only had an inkling until now that I was a monster.

“Yes,” I breathe, letting him go and stepping away. “Yes, it is him.”

Walter steps forward and lifts up my hand, pulling me towards the end of the chaise in the corner. I go along just like I had with Fiona. He turns around and I watch him now. How his face looks in the candles he’s lighting on the table and the kind but saddened expression on his face when he sits in the chair across it.

“I’m sorry,” I say. So much for ‘Pitch up.’

“What happened?” and he asks it so genuinely that I wonder whether in another life, in one where I wasn’t ruined, if he and I would have stood a chance.

But, I know I’d never give him the time of day, no matter how sincere. Maybe we could’ve been friends though, if I didn’t have so many secrets that I’m burdened to keep.

“I chose him, but in the end, he didn’t choose me back,” I say vaguely.

“Then he’s an idiot because you’re perfect, Basilton. You’re the top of our class, you’re so eloquent and clever and poised—”

He’s right. Simon is an idiot, and he was my idiot. But he’s also wrong. So wrong about me. Right now, I just want Walter to shut up because he’s listing off the perfect Pitch, and Simon knew how tangled and messy, insecure, and stubborn I am. And he still loved me. Even if it wasn’t in the way I love him. He still accepted me, Baz, and not ‘Basilton.’

“—I mean, remember that time the professor was trying to humiliate the class and you corrected him in front of the whole room. You utterly shamed him and—”

“I’m sorry,” there I go again. I clutch my head because everything is spinning and I feel sick. “I have to go.” I shoot up and run out the room with Walter calling after me.

I don’t know where I’m going, but somehow I manage to avoid the party and find myself outside again. I run towards the steps leading onto the grounds and miss one.

I’m so drunk, I end up on my face.

I lift myself up and see the blue glow of the moon on the grass under me. I feel like I’m being watched, and I’m lost.

I’m so lost.

 

**Penny**

Baz is outside again and he looks drunk. I wince when he misses his footing on the steps and ends up crashing onto the ground.

He barely moves and for a minute I’m afraid he’s concussed, but he gets up onto all fours then leans back on his knees, hands limp at his sides.

And then he looks up at me and my heart breaks because he’s crying and too far gone that every ounce of his heartbreak is on his face as tear tracks gleam back in my light.

Where Simon is subdued and emotionless, Baz looks like he’s going to be torn apart.

He closes his eyes to me, still crying and drops his head into his hands and I see the sobs wrack through him, shuddering and heaving on his knees in the darkness.

He wasn’t kissing the boy to move on from Simon. I think he was kissing the boy to remember him.

* * *

 

Another couple of weeks have passed, but Simon’s not any better. I’m worried for him because for sure he seems emptier and he’s not glowing as brightly as before.

Even Micah says it feels like the winter chill is coming earlier and it’s only August. The Sun’s not as bright because Simon’s not, and I don’t know how to snap him out of it.

“Si,” I say, trying to coax him out of sleep. “Wake up, Simon.”

He’s been mumbling in his sleep. It sounds like ‘Baz’ over and over. I’ve been sitting beside his bed trying to work on what I’m going to say to him. He ignores me and just rolls deeper into the shadows of his blankets—shadows that his light doesn’t quite erase anymore. His skin doesn’t radiate, it’s color is almost flat like a human’s.

I sigh because I don’t know what to do.

The humans are complaining. They were so happy to have the sun back uninterrupted, but now there’s talk amongst them again about the gods being angry and cursing them with an early winter.

I smooth his hair from his face and leave his darkening room. He gets worse every day and I don’t know how to stop it.

I went to the bosses in the beginning, but they only started their whispering and dismissed me with a, “That will be all, Penelope. Return to the Lunar Palace.” I know something’s wrong and I don’t trust them anymore. We have to look out for ourselves and Simon’s in no shape to do it, so it’s up to me then.

It’s time for the New Moon, so I descend to Earth but when I get to Micah, he relays me a message.

“The—the—” he’s wide-eyed and open mouthed like he can’t believe what he’s trying to say.

“Micah, get on with it.” I’m stressed and everything has been making me panic lately.

“Okay… Alright. _The Goddess of the Hunt_ appeared to me and told me to give you a message.”

“Agatha?”

“Yeah, a _goddess_. I saw a goddess, Pen. I mean, you’re my favorite goddess, but—”

“I’m not a god.”

“Well, you are to me,” he says sappily.

“What did she want?”

“She wanted to speak with you. In the wood.”

“Where in the woods?”

“She just said ‘in the wood’, but I was just across the river upstream so maybe try there?”

“Thank you, Micah,” I smile and press a kiss to his temple before running off in a blur of silver mist.

I have no clue where Agatha is, but I have a feeling she’ll find me next to the doe drinking from the riverbank.

“Aggie?!” I shout around me.

I see her, all smooth, pale skin and long blonde hair falling down her back. She slinks out from behind a tree.

“’The wood’, really?” I deadpan.

“He’s still human. I have to keep it cryptic and goddess-worthy still,” she smiles.

“What’s so urgent that you had to run to my boyfriend, but not urgent enough to just visit me at the palace?”

“Boy-friend. Simon said he had a human boy-friend, too,” she says airily, but then a frown settles across her mouth that does nothing to mar her beauty. “And, I did try the palace, but you weren’t there.”

“Why not the Sun Palace then?”

“Other people’s sadness is uncomfortable to me,” she grimaces, “and that place reeks of it.”

I roll my eyes. “So, what is it?”

“I’ve heard rumors,” she begins. “Of Simon. They’re calling him a ‘dying star.’ If his light goes out, he will cease to exist. And they will just create a new one in his place.”

“Who told you this?” I practically yell. Is that what the bosses were whispering about? Those traitors.

“The Queen of the Underworld is on the surface to play. She has her own domain now in Hades. That makes her a boss now, and all the bosses know.”

“Why didn’t they tell _you_ directly? You’re a goddess, too.”

“They don’t trust me, knowing my connection to you and Simon.”

“Aggie, this is why Simon’s been so sick! It’s because of Baz. His light is dying because of this stupid contract.”

“I don’t usually get involved in things outside the forest, but Simon has spent his existence making sure my animals thrive,” she says. “And, he could’ve killed my bear that day, but he didn’t. He’s sweet.”

“We have to do something. You’re helping me.”

She looks bored for a moment, but then sighs and says, “Sure. Why not?”

“Okay, now. Where is the queen?” I ask more determinedly. Agatha’s smile widens. Because the queen’s powerful and compassionate. The more power on our side, the better.

But, trying to hunt down the queen—a maiden of springtime—is a lot harder when it feels like Autumn. The trees aren’t getting as much light and the leaves are starting to burn orange already which means the queen’s mother, the Goddess of Growth, has no choice but to aid the changing seasons.

Eventually Agatha uses her perks of being one of the big-time goddesses and manages to track down the mother. She’s weeping when we find her.

“My Goddess?” I ask out to her. She ignores me. Simon and I aren’t gods, we’re just their creations. We have no importance in their politics which is why this mission is so daunting, but Agatha’s on our side and all we have to do is get another with the right connections. It’s all one big over-glorified high society, if you ask me.

“My _fair_ goddess,” Agatha calls out. It should sound polite, but Agatha just sounds aloof and bored. The woman stops crying long enough to glare.

“What do you want?” she spits.

“We’re looking for your daughter,” Agatha answers and then the woman starts to wail again. “It’s of grave importance. The world is falling apart, and your daughter can help us.”

“Do you not see?” the woman hisses, yellowing leaves crunched between her fingers. “Autumn is already here. My daughter is already gone!”

“She can help us restore the dying star,” Agatha responds. “Once he’s running again, the seasons will revert, and you’ll have your daughter again for a little longer.”

“Can you promise this?”

“I can promise I’m going to save my friend,” I finally interject confidently.

The woman stares harshly at me but sees what she’s looking for and slowly nods. “There is a waterfall north. Its endless pit sucks everything that falls into that wasteland they call the Underworld,” she says venomously. “You will find her there. Now go. Leave me.”

She doesn’t have to tell me twice. My magic surrounds me and I’m at the top of the waterfall in not even a blink. Agatha appears cool and graceful from behind a boulder. Sitting on the rocks is the queen, petting a stray goat.

“Had to stop this one from getting too close to the edge. I was wondering when you’d come, Aggie,” she says. “He’s been crying. Crying for your mama?” she asks the little goat. “I cry for my mum, too. And I cry for the surface. I think I get my crying from my mum. But, then I cry for the Underworld, too. Funny, innit?”

“Ebb. We have to help Simon, but the Gods aren’t going to do a thing. We need more power on our side… We need you to help us in any way you can. Maybe talk to them? Tell them to find another way, not to just let him wither and die,” I plead.

“Oh, I’ve heard all about Simon and his human. What’s his name? I don’t like calling them just ‘human.’ They’re people, too, y’know. Even when they have no more life in them and appear before me down there,” she nods her head towards the pit at the bottom of the waterfall.

“His name is Baz,” I answer.

“Baz. Baz and Simon—Simon and Baz. It fits. It was so sad, but I know Simon didn’t mean a word of it. No, he didn’t. Made me cry all the same.”

“A word of what?” Agatha asks. Agatha stays out of everyone’s troubles. I envy her for it because I could never resist.

“How did you hear? Were you there?” I ask in surprise.

“Baz likes to tend to the roses in his garden, and the roses like to whisper secrets to each other.” She _is_ a maiden of springtime. Those gossipy weeds. “All the gods and goddesses have their ways, and everyone wanted to see how the Sun would end things with his lover.” She starts to sniff. “Those poor boys. So heartbroken, trying to protect one another until the very end.”

“Not the end. Ebb, please, focus,” I say softly. “You must know something, something in the library down there, or from other gods that can help us with Simon.”

“Don’t need anything from a library to tell you that Simon’s dying of a broken heart.”

“That doesn’t help us!” I groan because there’s nothing we can do about that. I tell them that. “If Simon comes down to Earth even one more time, Baz dies. And in that case, Simon will die from a broken heart all over again!”

“Aggie, take this little one back to his mama.” Ebb says, wiping the last of her tears.

Agatha herds the little goat behind her. It stays put by her side, waiting for guidance.

“I’ll need to talk to my partner on this one. Simon won’t live if Baz is dead.” She thinks for a moment then says seriously, “Broken hearts are tricky business. Avoiding them gets even messier.” She rises and stands at the edge of the rock. “Aggie, I think I’ll borrow a Raven. I’ll send her to you, Penny, in two day’s time.”

And with that, she jumps off; falling with the stream of water into the whirlpool and disappears under the swirling surface. She doesn’t rise back up.

I’m frustrated because I’m standing there with Agatha and a goat and I still don’t have a solution. We got nowhere. Just a promise to a goddess that I would save the seasons from changing so fast and a promise from her daughter to send a flippin bird.

“Trust Ebb,” Agatha says, snapping for the little goat to follow her back into the forest.

Do I have a choice?

 

**Simon**

I dream of versions of Baz.

In some dreams, his skin looks gold from my glow and his eyes look like lightning in clouds, dark hair absorbing all that light like a black hole. He’s gorgeous.

In others, I see him as he is during the day; the colors of his clothes all coordinated and complimentary, details that get lost in the hue of my light. His eyes are deep-water gray, blue and green and silvery like Pen’s stardust. He’s stunning.

But then I see him breaking. His eyes gleaming with tears and fresh pain while I split his heart open with my bare hands and watch the pieces try to keep on beating. As I hiss words I could never mean but have to mean, and have to deliver like they’re true to keep him safe from me.

Because he’ll wait for me, and I need him to move on. To find a normal human boy from his world that can ride Ursa or walk with him through the garden labyrinth without the world spinning into chaos. Without people wondering if they’ve angered the gods and why the sun has disappeared for all except one person…

Even if he deserves it the most.

I can’t stand seeing his face like that. I don’t like having dreams of his blood on my hands, so I stop sleeping because that’s all they ever are now. It’s not like I need to anyways. It just passes time.

So now I’m raging. I suppose it’s good that I’m on my own because I would hate myself even more later if I hurt someone else like Penny who just keeps trying to soothe me. And, I’m tired of hurting people. But the anger is building in me and I keep clenching and unclenching my fists.

First it was the table of treats to keep me sated. I flipped that over with one arm. Then I destroyed one of the paintings in the library. It was a likeness of the Queen of the Gods. The others I ruined were of the other bosses. I ripped into them with my nails and tore scrapes of painted canvas, threads splitting and wood splintering. I think it was one of the original portraits, too. Inspired by some muse and hung in the Sun Palace like the deserted museum it is.

I used to wish I could bring Baz here. I thought he’d enjoy it. There’s so much art, sculptures and pottery, and books—endless books for an endless prison. I get tired of the subjects sometimes though—all dramas and philosophy mostly—and that’s when Penny brings me biographies about humans from Micah. The muses don’t help with those, so they don’t care to store them here. Plus, Baz could play his violin in the banquet hall that used to be used for the old stars. They had a lot of parties. The gods actually attended those ones. Not for me though.

Yep. The old stars. Oh, I know about them alright.

They all died or were murdered for some reason or another. That’s how I know my days are numbered, too. That’s why I don’t care about destroying priceless relics or pissing off the bosses.

I’ve even thought, ‘What’s stopping me from being with Baz if I’m going to die either by my light going out or by the hands of the gods themselves?’ But then I remember he’ll die and then how I shredded his heart anyway. And how he can hate me now and move on, and _good_. I want him to never think once about me again. I want him to forget the absolute nightmare that I am, and to wake up to my light in the day and think, ‘It’s just a fire ball in the sky,’ like his aunt Fiona does. He’ll forget soon. I know he will.

So, until this comes to an end, I guess I’ll just glare down at the world, feeling all this hatred for the gods, feeling grateful that I know what it felt like to be loved by Baz, feel envious of Pen and her Moon, and wait to expire.

Fuck. The anger’s gone. I’m crying again.

* * *

 

Penny’s still down there on Earth. She has three days before she has to head back up into the sky.

I’ve torn apart and demolished every likeness of the main Gods in the palace. I’ve left the ones I like though. I read in one of the human books from Micah that being surrounded by things we love when we die helps ease the process, and I already feel so weak. I can’t have Baz with me, so these will have to do. Hopefully Penny will be there, but I also don’t want her to have to see my light go out.

I wonder how long it’ll take to make a new star? How long will the world be in darkness? I wonder if Baz will think I’ve come down to Earth and not sought him out... I hope that doesn’t happen, I hope they just whip up a new star in no time. I want Baz to live never knowing what the Darkness looks like ever again. He can have constancy and reliance in knowing that I will always be unattainably in the sky.

I walk through the corridors and through my room towards the balcony. It’s night for Baz’s side of the world. I think about how his curtains were open the other day for the first time since I broke his heart. I had wanted to get a peek at him, but he wasn’t in his bed. I hope I get to see him one last time before I expire.

* * *

 

**Baz**

Fiona and Nico had practically carried me to the carriage by the time they came searching for me at the ball. She hadn’t even bothered lecturing me, just sighed and ordered Nico to grab up my other arm.

They tossed me on a guest bed, but she shut the curtains for me, so I suppose I owe her one for taking care of me that night.

I felt like hell the next morning, but the hangover was at least more bearable than my ‘moping’ as she keeps calling it. That is, until I came back to my senses. Then I was just physically destroyed as I was emotionally.

Because how am I supposed to go back to all the pomp and circumstance. How am I supposed to open my heart _again,_ and to the possibility of heartbreak at that, when it doesn’t even beat anymore? Because I don’t feel it. It stopped working when Simon told me I wasn’t important to him anymore.

That he wouldn’t watch for me.

Human. Only human. I’m human. I should be with other humans. But I’m in love with the Sun and so disillusioned with my world.

I’m a lost cause. Fiona’s even hidden my pistol. I think she thinks I’m going to off myself soon. I’d like to say the notion hadn’t peaked my curiosity, but I won’t do it. I’m weak in the way that I’ll live forever as long as he’s still in the sky, and make sure I’m here for the one day he gets curious and finally _watches for me_ again.

And I’ll know that day because I’ll feel it. Somehow, I’ll know he’s watching me again and I’ll die on the spot knowing I crossed the Sun’s mind one last time. That the Sun remembered _me_ , Basilton Grimm-Pitch, just another human. But for a moment, I’ll feel as important as Fiona says us Pitches are.

* * *

 

I’m back to my routine of sleeping away my existence and living in hiding because I want Simon to see me at my best and I’m _so_ far from it. I’m about to succumb again when I hear my balcony door open and see a bluish glow shine from behind the door in the mirror opposite. My eyes snap open and I look around wildly because I know that otherworldly glow. But, I know it’s not Simon.

“Penny!” I gasp. I jump out of bed, but then I’m self-conscious all of a sudden because I haven’t been eating and I know I look too tall and skinny in just my pants.

“Simon didn’t mean a thing of it,” she says, and hope blooms in my broken heart, desperately trying to break through all the twisted knots meant to keep the torn-up pieces together. “He loves you.”

“I know he did.”

“No! I mean that if he leaves, you die. That was the contract. He does love you, just as much as you love him. Maybe even more!” she huffs. “Baz, he loves you so much, he’s wasting away.”

It’s like a fog clears—not at him loving me, but him being in trouble, with Penny saying it like I can help.

“His light is going out and if we don’t help him, they’re just going to make a new one in his place, and it won’t be Simon. It won’t be ours.”

“A new what?” I ask dumbly.

“A new star. He’s a dying star, Baz.”

No. No, no, no, I’m not going to live in a world with someone else’s light in the sky. “What do we do?”

“What would you do to save him,” Penny asks gravely. “Would you give up everything?”

“Yes,” I say without hesitation.

“…Would you give up your life for his?”

My life? What’s a life without my favorite star in the sky anyway. “What do I need to do, Penny. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything.”

“The Queens of the Underworld have magic—something that might help Simon if you prove yourself and Simon worthy of it. So, get dressed. If you’re serious then you need to make your arrangements. You’re not going to survive this,” she says.

I stare at her, trying to read her expression. There’s something she’s not telling me, but I know she’s telling the truth when she says I won’t make it.

I do as she says. I get dressed, better dressed than I have in weeks because if I’m to face Death, I’m going to do it with a Grimm-Pitch smirk and my hair brushed back.

A servant gasps when she sees me emerge from my room and quickly hurries into one of the others out of sight, like I’m a ghost.

I signal for Penny who’s hiding behind my door to follow me downstairs where I find Fiona and Nico sitting by the fire. Her head is in his lap and he’s playing with her hair while he reads aloud.

And if this is the last time I’m going to see them, this is what I want to remember, so I close my eyes and savor it before I walk forward and announce myself to ruin this rareness.

“Baz! You’re up…” she says in suspicion. “What’s going on.”

“Simon needs my help.”

“What’s wrong.” It’s a demand, not a question.

“He’s dying, and he needs my help.”

She sits upright and glares. “Yes, you said that. What are you planning on doing, making wings and flying to the Sun?”

“He wouldn’t be able to survive up there even if he did,” Penny says from the doorway. They stare at Penny, all glowing skin and bright hair.

“I’m not coming back.”

“Baz, what in the hell are you up to?” Nico asks, they’re both getting more upset by the second.

“I forbid it. I don’t even have to know, but I forbid it,” she says.

“You can’t forbid me from anything, Fiona. And I’m just trying to say my goodbyes while I have the chance.”

She tosses off the blanket and jumps to her feet, Nico right after her.

“What now? You think you can just waltz out of here and never come back because you’re old enough to button your trousers yourself? What would Tasha think if I just let her only child go off on some stupid, dangerous whim for his boyfriend?” she raises her voice.

I raise mine right back, “She’d think, ‘My son found the love of his life and he’s doing everything he can to protect him.’ My father would think, ‘It’s okay, I understand.’ And even Dev would think, ‘Wow, Baz actually found something worth existing for!’”

Fiona winces, but holds her tongue when Nico touches her wrist.

“I can’t live under a sky where he’s not in it. It’ll break my heart just like father and I won’t survive that because I _love_ him. I love him with every single piece of my soul and I will do and try anything to save him because he saved me!”

I’m shaking, but I don’t let my eye contact break with hers. I need her to understand that I just can’t do this without him.

“Fi, I was fading so fast before I met Simon. I was going out, too. Nothing was mattering. And Simon stopped that. Now, I need to stop him from going out because if I don’t, no one can, and I’m not going to just let Simon fade out of existence like I was.”

“…We have to let him.” Fiona shushes Nico, gripping his hand tighter. “You know we do,” Nico whispers to her. For all her tough exterior, Fiona’s eyes begin to well. She’s still staring daggers into me though.

“What’s the plan?”

“I’m not allowed to tell you. And I have to leave.”

“We’re already running late because Baz had to get all prettied up,” Penny drawls.

Fiona narrows her eyes at me then grabs the book out of Nico’s hand and throws it at my head, but it’s a poor shot. I lean to the side nonetheless. “You can’t just leave us, you prick!” She’s trying hard not to crumble.

I take her into my arms. I’m taller than her now and suddenly I’m having flashes to all the times she's held me—when my father was depressed, when he wouldn’t leave his room, when he got sick, when he couldn’t go on anymore. I feel Nico’s arms wrap around the both of us, and I think for a moment, that maybe this could be enough. This could be enough to live for.

But then I imagine Simon dying, dying because seeing me means putting my life at risk. And I won’t stand for that.

Fiona starts murmuring her love for me with ‘narcissistic prick’ and ‘manipulative cur’ and ‘stupid, lovesick fool’ intermingled into it and I smile and hold her tighter.

But I am. I really am a stupid, lovesick fool. When Penny finally calls for me, Fiona kisses my cheek one last time and I make a comment about how, “Affection makes you look older, Fiona,” and she tells me to fuck off and that, “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you...”

“Have your own runt and don’t punish him with the name Tyrannus.” I kiss her temple and walk away. I don’t look back until I’m outside.

It’s night, but each room is lit up dimly with the candelabras. I can see Nico holding her in his arms and I’ve never seen her look so vulnerable. I try to envision her with her head in Nico’s lap again, listening contently to the words from his pages.

“You’ll need to take your horse. If you leave tonight, you’ll be there by morning.”

“Penny, I want to do something before we leave.”

“What?”

“Just in case this doesn’t work. I don’t want him to hear it from anyone else.”

She stares at me in debate. I can tell she wants me to go. She’s scared any day now Simon’s just going to run out. I already spent too long with Fiona and Nico, but I need to do this. It’s stupid and sappy and cliché, but I need him to know. So, without waiting for her permission, I go forwards, grab the wheel barrow, and make towards the piles of left over white cobblestone from my gardening project.

It takes me close to twenty minutes and Penny is nagging in my ear the whole time.

“I’ve practically been sleeping since he left Earth. I’ll be able to ride through the night no problem. And why can’t you just magic me away? I mean, you come all the way from the _Moon_. A day’s ride shouldn’t be that hard,” I grunt, heaving the last one in line.

“How many times do we need to say it?” She rolls her eyes as I dust off my hands and head towards Ursa. “Simon and I are _creations_ , not gods. We have limits.”

“Then why don’t you ask Agatha, _Goddess_ of the Hunt.”

“Because she said you need to do it on your own.”

“Well, thanks for the support,” I say, packing Ursa’s saddle with a bit more water. I lift up and get comfortable in the seat. It’s going to be a long ride.

 

**Simon**

They’re waiting for me to expire.

I don’t mind. If anything, I wish it wouldn’t drag on so much. It’s actual torture not seeing Baz, in person or even from the sky, but I’m holding out for the day I do see him. Then I can expire.

Penny has been hovering so much lately, I think the bosses are giving her a break—last moments with a dying friend. But she’s been gone and I’m actually worried that I’m going to die alone.

I think I’ll miss being the Sun actually. I’ll miss watching all the people changing other people’s lives because I’m around allowing it to happen. It makes me feel more like an active participant than just a light in the sky when I think about it that way. I’ll miss things like watching ships cut across oceans for distant lands and how swarms of people flood to the docks to wave their handkerchiefs at loved ones leaving them.

But I’ll miss Baz most.

Light’s already covered most of their land. It’s morning there. He’ll be in his bed, he’ll have his sleepy smile, and his hair will fall perfectly around his head like a halo. Not that he lets me see it anymore.

I cross my arms over the side of the balcony and settle my chin down. I can see Micah and his mother hanging laundry on the clothes lines. The sheets are billowing in the wind. Peaceful. I could die to this.

I could also happily die to one last look at Baz, too.

But I won’t look because I know I still have at least a week to go and I want to save him for one of the last things I see.

Still…

I’m not good at keeping promises to myself. That’s how I got into this situation to begin with, and take a look at his bedroom window.

His curtains are still closed, but his balcony door is open to a dark room. There’s a brightness of something in the yard, on the browning lawn that was once so green (I’m doing that, or rather I’m _failing_ ) before the Sun started losing power.

It’s the white cobblestones he was using to border the garden and they’re arranged in large, wobbling letters:

_I  LOVE  YOU_

I let out a strangled cry that echoes throughout the balcony. I feel my head hurt and my heart ache and my eyes sting all at once. Fuck. FUCK! He did that for me, I know that’s for me—

After all the awful things I said and how I said them, he still told me in the only way he knew how to reach me. It’s all coming out of me again, right when I thought I had nothing left to spill, and suddenly my couple of weeks left to live feel more like five seconds because everything hurts and I made him hurt, but he still loves me, he still loves me, he still loves me…

Like she sensed it, Penny is suddenly there next to me and she’s hugging me, telling me everything’s going to be okay and that she’s fixing everything. I want to argue with her, _how_? How can everything be okay? He still loves me, he’s not supposed to love me.

“He’s going to help you, Simon. He’s going to fix this.”

“W—what? What did you say, Pen?” I look at her brokenly.

“I said, he’s going to help you. We all are—Aggie, Ebb, Baz, and me. We’re not giving up on you, Simon, so I need you to hold on with everything you’ve got.”

I don’t understand what she’s talking about. “Wait… Did you… Did you tell him I love him?”

“I had to, Simon. He was upset and I needed him to understand that—”

“Why would you do that?! He was supposed to move on!” I shout, suddenly angry, but it’s a weak anger because I’m nearly gone.

“Because he doesn’t want to live in a world where you’re not in it and neither do I! Your light is fading and if I can’t bring you down to Baz then—”

“Pen, what did you do?” I feel my face go pale. I’ve been colder lately, but I feel all the warmth drain from me.

“He’s going to see Ebb.”

“Okay?” I’m still confused, but now I’m getting panicked and agitated.

“And her partner.”

“But her partner’s in the Underworld.”

“…They’re the only gods powerful enough to—”

“No! No, what did you do, Pen!” I stumble back towards the railing and lean over, scanning every bit of the land at once. I don’t see him. I don’t bloody see him.

“He’s at the waterfall, but it’s okay,” she says. “If he makes it back, everything will work out. I promise.”

“If? _If?_ ”

I see the large wingspan of a Raven—they’re one of Ebb’s familiars. It’s circling around the waterfall. I narrow in on it and I see Agatha, she’s petting Ursa and Baz is…

“No!” I’m clambering over the side of the balcony when Penny all but drags me back down to the floor. I can’t fight her off, I’m so tired, and I feel drained and lifeless.

I’m still shouting at Pen to let me go, I’m thrashing and she’s telling me, “Calm down, Simon,” over and over again. She’s holding me down and I can’t budge from her weight, I just turn my head helplessly to peer off the balcony from between the banisters.

Baz is pointing at Ursa, telling Agatha something. She pets the horse again and nods. Then he shakes his hands. He’s nervous. He’s scared. He’s going to die. He’s going to die and it’s because of me. He’s supposed to live a long, happy life in love with a human, surrounded by family and friends.

But he’s shattering that dream with each inch closer to the edge of the waterfall, closer to the swirling vortex of water below. He lifts one foot and—

“NO!” I shriek. “NO! NO! NO!” I’m crying, sobs are ripping through me because I’m the one who’s fragile, delicate, and temporary now and Baz _was_ but now he’s—

“It’s going to be okay, Simon.”

I want her to shut up. I want to expire. I want to die.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends. I'm sorry, the angst is strong right now... It'll get better, I promise! Did this chapter hurt you as much as it hurt me? :)


	6. The Final Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Ebb pushed me down the bloody stairs."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can read this as the end, but in the epilogue I'll address some things. I hope you enjoy this and sorry for all the prior angst!

**Baz**

I thought dying would hurt a lot more than it does.

Drowning feels like I always thought it would though. Your senses flood over—everything is touching you, there’s pressure everywhere like a hundred hands are gripping and dragging you down deeper. You start searching for air among the swarming bubbles like a fool; like you don’t know you’re going to die, but water just keeps pouring in, expanding until your lungs feel like they’re going to burst. And you keep sucking in more mouthfuls of water, choking on it because it’s everywhere—it’s in you, around you, killing you.

And, it _hurts_. But only for a moment. Only until you stop thrashing around and fighting it.

Because then everything just stills. The light fades, silence fills, and you feel the last of your life drifting from your fingertips with the current… So, maybe it’s just the panic that hurts then; the pain of clinging to your old existence.

It doesn’t hurt so bad anymore once everything goes still. It’s a sinking heaviness that never lets up. It’s quiet. And, dark. I’m barely aware that I’m sinking down into a whirlpool.

And for the first time in months, I feel at peace. My heart is no longer breaking, but maybe that’s because it’s truly stopped beating this time.

My last thought is that I died months ago when Simon left.

~:~:~:~:~:~:~

When I wake up, I open my mouth to groan, but only water pours out.

I don’t know if it’s because I need to breathe again or because I’m so used to my lungs not feeling so full, but I turn onto my stomach and heave and gag it all out. I keep coughing and sputtering mouthfuls of water until I can I breathe. When my body stops convulsing, I rest my cheek against the ground. It’s stone—smooth, dark, and cold.

I’m freezing. I’m so bloody cold, I’m shivering, so I lift my head up and look around me for light, for Simon’s sunshine.

But I’m trapped in a large cavern with long, pointed stalactites hanging from a ceiling so high and dark, I can’t even see where it begins. The points are slick and dripping with water that echoes around the cave like soft rain. And, there’s green light rippling like the ocean across the walls. I sit up and see that the eerie emerald reflection is coming from the glowing river next to me, and that there’s a boat by the dock where a lone figure even taller and lankier than me stands facing the river.

I ease onto my feet, trying to muffle my stray coughs in the presence of the stranger. I walk over, straightening up in a way that’s more dignified even though I’m a sopping, soggy mess. Even in death I’m vain and proud. Simon used to always tease me about it in life.

I’m about to call to the stranger when I hear their gravelly voice.

“…Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch…” the cloaked figure seems to speak to the river.

“How do you know my name?” I ask. “You’re not even looking at me.”

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Why?”

“The Lady had high hopes that you would attempt to prove worthy.”

I make my way down to the dock and slow a few feet behind him. I can smell them from here, dank and musty. They’re standing at the very end of the dock, just facing ahead, not even fazed by me. I pause at their side and crane my neck to try to get a glimpse up at their face.

I can’t see anything around that rough, black cloth of their hood.

“Climb aboard the ferry.” They’re still not looking at me.

With one last glance around the cave, I decide that it seems like my only way out is to go further into it. And if the Goddesses themselves, the Queens of the Underworld, are expecting me, I shouldn’t leave them waiting. So, I turn from the figure and walk back down to the middle of the dock then board the ferry.

I settle into the wooden boat, facing towards the tunnel of the cavern then look back to the figure.

They’re gone.

The boat disembarks, gliding away and into the middle of the river, and when I look forward again, the seat in front of me—empty just a second ago—is suddenly occupied by the stranger.

“Who are you?” I ask.

There’s silence, a long, drawn out pause that makes me wonder if they’re ever going to answer and after they do, I realize that it’s probably best to keep my questions to myself.

“The ferryman,” they say.

The ferryman’s grayed, wrinkled hands rest palms down flat in their lap, and they’re sitting so high and straight that I have to look up at them.

Is this what the grim reaper looks like? I can see that it’s just blackness, deep saturated darkness, where their face should be, but it still feels unnerving to stare so I look at the passing stalagmites piercing the surface of the luminescent river with interest until I grow bored of those, too.

Leave it to me, to wind up in the Underworld bored out of my mind.

 

 

**Agatha**

Ursa’s an exquisite creature. She’s intelligent, perceptive, and loyal. She doesn’t want to leave the waterfall after Baz jumps, and I understand and trust her intuition. Her companion will be returning—there is no ‘if’ about it. Ursa thinks so, and therefore, so do I. We wait, curled up in one another under a tree down below as I manifest apples in my palm for her to eat.

“He was scared. But I suppose it’s not that silly for a mortal to fear dying,” I say to Ursa. She huffs in agreement.

And Baz _was_ scared, even if he was trying to cover it. Probably because Simon was watching him. We both know he was, the day grew brighter as he stood there. It dimmed again after Baz fell.

He kept looking at me before he did it. Maybe for some reassurance, but that’s Penny’s job, not mine. He said,

“This is pretty high up.” I saw him swallow, fear building up in his throat, no doubt.

I simply hummed, petting his horse.

“What if this doesn’t work?” he asked.

“Then I guess you die.”

“…And Simon?”

“He’s already dying. He won’t last much longer. You won’t see him again though. Dead stars don’t travel to the Underworld. The Gods scrape up every last bit of dust and magic to form a new one.”

That seemed to seal his mouth shut for a couple more moments while he stalled. That's when the brightened. His face transformed then, into something more determined and strong.

“Take care of Ursa,” he said and pointed. “Make sure she gets back home safe.”

I nodded. He stepped off the ledge and I didn’t even look down to see his fall, or watch the whirlpool claim what he had left of his life.

“It’s okay, girl. It’s okay,” I cooed at his horse.

We’ll wait though. Just like Simon is.

 

 

**Penny**

No matter what I tell him, he’s inconsolable. He’s pushing me away because he says I’ve killed Baz.

I told him that it’s just a test, a sacrifice of sorts, that Ebb has a plan, but Simon’s already heartbroken and guiltier than before, and now it’s increased tenfold because he thinks Baz’s life is over. That his chances at a normal life if after Simon dies is over.

Which, I suppose in a way it is. I can’t contradict him about that. I only know so much about Ebb’s mysterious plan, she said it was imperative that she keep Baz in the dark as much as possible. All of which I’ve already told Simon—Baz is dead, yes… but he’s alright?

I guess that doesn’t sound as comforting now that I think of it.

But Baz would never go for a classic, mundane human life now anyway. He’s had a taste of the stars he loves so much. So, I keep telling Simon, “Hold on. Hold on. He hasn’t disappeared. Just keep waiting. He’s going to do everything he can to keep you alive.”

“He’s _dead_ , Pen,” he whimpers. “I could’ve saved him—why didn’t you let me save him?!” And it’s like tears keep magically manifesting themselves in his eyes because they slide down his cheeks without pause.

“This is all part of the plan—”

“Damn your plan, Penny,” he cries.

“It’s _Ebb’s_ plan. If you don’t trust me, if you don’t trust an actual goddess then trust in Baz. You really think he would let this be the end of everything? With both of you dead? Trust him, Simon. Just hold on, keep your light going just a little longer.”

And Simon listens. He nods after a minute because he’s good and true and his love for Baz is good and true, and he still has hope left in him to keep him alive.

 

**Baz**

I step off the ferry and onto the dock.

That was the longest, most uncomfortably silent boat ride of my life.

Or, well, death? Life after death?

I thank the ferryman, but they don’t respond, just disappears in front of me in a blink and I’m left alone on the uneven, ancient planks suspended above of the river. I do a double take because I swear I see _another_ face looking back at me from beneath the surface like I have this whole ride here. This place is downright spooky. But not far from what I was expecting the Underworld to be like.

I walk along the path, my boots squelching with water, and so much for my plan to appear stately and powerful before the goddesses.

The road opens up and crystals of all colors and cutting angles protrude from the walls, lighting the way as the river had done for the cave walls earlier. I follow the path for the longest time. It seems to get even colder the further I enter the Underworld. I round a corner and almost die all over again from terror when I see three massive dogs.

Or, no…? One dog. Three heads. Three sets of teeth to shred into me. Not that I’d feel it at this point. I’m numb all over and still shivering slightly.

“Cerberus!” a willowy figure calls from the gate. “Down boy! He’s expected by your mums.”

Cerberus immediately tempers. So, _it_ understands.

“Come boy.”

I watch the dog—dogs—warily and wait in my spot.

“Oi!” she shouts at me. “You, boy. Come!” I look away from ‘Cerberus’ to the woman. She has a dark lace veil over her wide-brimmed hat that covers her face like she’s in mourning. Her hands are gray, too, but smooth unlike the ferryman’s.

“Me?” I ask.

“Yes, you. Come, their Majesties have been waiting for you.”

She waves her hand and Cerberus disappears, hidden in the shadows of the great walls on either side of the twisting, metal gate in front of me.

“Cerberus keeps the dead from wandering out.”

“I wasn’t trying to get _out_ —” I say annoyed because I feel embarrassed by how my skeleton practically jumped out of my flesh. “—I was trying to get _in_.”

“They’re dogs. What, you expect them not to greet whoever’s at the door?”

I follow her through the courtyard, to the magnificently carved stone doors imbedded with crystals and gems in the wall of the cave.

End of the line.

 

 

**Ebb**

Our gatekeeper opens the doors to our main hall, and Baz walks in drenched head to toe in water from the vortex.

“Baz, your clothes are all wet,” I frown. I wave my hand and his hair fluffs back up and his suit doesn’t cling and hang heavy against his skinny frame. He’s too thin, probably hasn’t eaten a decent amount since Simon stopped visiting him, the poor boy.

“Thank you… um, my Queen,” he adds with a bow.

“Call me Ebb,” I say with a smile.

“And you may call me ‘Your Majesty,’” my partner hisses, sitting in her throne—the chair is a same replica as my own, equal in every way. It’s what I love about her, it’s what I love about us. We’re partners. I’m not just a maiden here, or only a daughter—here, I’m a queen. Her queen, and she’s mine.

But with that comes our predicament. She’s not a romantic like me, she’s been in the Underworld with the dead too long. And if I think we should do something like help this boy then I need her agreement.

It’s not easily earned sometimes.

“Stop that,” I tut at her and grasp her hand.

She drags her black icy stare from Baz up to me. The glow on her skin isn’t as harsh on the eyes once she gets a look at me.

I’m trying to soften her up. Sometimes when I want something really bad I don’t mind batting my eyes a bit.

 “So, Baz,” I begin. “You took the Leap of Faith.”

“I suppose I did,” he says cooly. Even in front of the Goddesses of the Underworld, he still manages to stay composed. He’s a strong one, I can feel it. No wonder Simon loves him so.

“Clueless human,” my partner scoffs. “Why not just swim into the vortex? Excessively dramatic, but I’d expect nothing less from your kind.”

Baz’s mouth drops for a moment at the realization that, yeah, he didn’t have to jump. He could’ve waded into it and gotten dragged down all the same. But it was part of my instructions to Penny. I run to his defense.

“I told him that he had to take the Leap of Faith to prove himself; to save Simon. Surely that ought’ve proven his love.”

“Perhaps.” She’s being curt and stubborn. “And what do you expect now, human?”

“My life for Simon’s.” He squares up at his name. “I know I’m human, but I love him with everything, with my _life_. And, hopefully my sacrifice is deemed worthy in your Majesties’ eyes.”

“Love,” my wife snorts. She props her elbow on the armrest of her throne and rests her chin like she’s bored. “Who is the _simple_ human Tyrannus to a star?”

“Simon is dying. Because of Baz,” I remind her.

“Speculation,” she snaps, still boring into him with her piercing stare.

“The only way to prove it would be to reunite them,” I argue.

“And if that fails, the Hierarchy will never cease mocking us.”

“We can save a god, love.”

“Simon is _not_ a god!” she projects, her authority echoes through the room.

She _does ‘_ project’ her voice from time to time like a true queen when she’s feeling stubborn enough and only for show in front of the souls who pass through. She doesn’t yell at me. She loves me too much.

“He is a mere creation. A creation that is failing at his duty,” she barks out angrily. “Why should this move us?”

I look back at Baz, he looks shaken for a moment by my wife’s frigidness. I think he thought the hardest bit was going to be the dying part.

She continues to me, not even sparing Baz another glance.

“Do you honestly think his tragic little human heart is actually capable of sustaining the existence of a creation of the gods? Do you actually think his _love_ is enough to do what the Hierarchy of Gods cannot do—”

“Only one way to find out,” Baz interrupts her.

My partner ruffles at his tone and stares back down at him from atop our platform.

“You can cut it out and examine it yourself,” he says fearlessly.

This catches her attention.

“My ‘tragic’ human heart. Take it. Rip my flesh open and split my bones apart and _take_ _it_. That’s what the legends all say, isn’t it? That you can weigh a heart’s goodness, can’t you?”

It’s true. We weighed it against a feather—but big ol’ one—on Judgement’s scales in the past, but my wife and I haven’t done that in ages. It’s an ancient practice that we contract out to the other deities in the southern regions of the Underworld.

(There are a lot of people who die every day. We can’t manage all of ‘em ourselves.)

But I see that little twitch in my partner’s lips because Baz is finally amusing her and truly showing himself. I knew he would. He’s a special human, this one. I’m sure Simon knew it from the moment he laid eyes on him.

“How about it then?” Baz asks valiantly. “Test it. Do it. I’ll prove it to you that when it comes to my love for Simon, there is nothing more powerful in existence.”

He steps closer to us, jaw clenched and his hands in fists at his side.

“You can stretch apart _every_ fiber and thread of my being and see that it all belongs to him.”

Baz’s head is held high now, and his back is as upright as the very backs of our thrones.

“—You can rip me limb from limb. Stitch me back together. Drown me all over again. Hell, you can cut out my tongue and I will _always_ find a way to show you how much I love my Star.”

She eyes him. Just staring him down, but the boy is so filled with love and passion and _fire_ that I realize what a wonderful match he is for the Sun.

She taps her fingers on the armrest of her chair, a subtle tell that I know well, and I know I’m close to winning my way already.

That Baz has almost won.

“So. Your proposal, human Tyrannus, is your place here, in the Underworld… The sacrifice of _your_ life in exchange for _his_.”

“That’s what I was told,” he says. He looks straight at me and says, “That’s what I was assured.”

“Well you were wrong, Baz,” I say.

I expect him to look scared. Fearful of his lost life. But instead, Baz further proves his worthiness as his eyes sadden, and as his façade is wiped clean of the careful control he exuded a minute ago. It’s replaced with something devastatingly touching and heartbreaking. It makes me so proud I can feel the tears coming.

“You jumped,” my partner drawls, “and entered our domain _expecting_ to exile your existence to preserve his—” but then she _smiles_ , as I knew she would. “But you’re wrong. The solution is clear and as obvious as death. Your loyalty and faith—your _love_ for your Star… has fulfilled the bargain set by my wife.”

“I don’t… I don’t understand,” he says, looking as confused as ever.

“I suggest you find a way to your Star yourself. For my own assurance,” she smirks. “But with our power, we grant you safe passage back to the surface world.”

“So, you’re bringing me back to life?”

“No,” I say.

“You will be neither alive nor dead. But, with our will, you can exist as Simon exists. That is, if you decide to return.”

“I mean no disrespect, your Majesties, but… why would I stay?” he asks, confusion all over his face.

“Obviously your family is here,” my wife says. “Natasha and Malcolm Grimm-Pitch. They’ve stood before us just as you are. And, one day her sister will, too.”

“My mother and father are here?” His eyes are wide and vulnerable and I see only a small boy without his family. “Are they alright?” he asks quietly.

“They’re together, Baz,” I say. “Of course they are.”

“I won’t let Simon die,” he says stubbornly once he shakes off his pain.

“Know, Tyrannus, that if you return to the surface, you’ll never step foot here again.”

“Can I see them? Before I leave, can I see them one more time?” he asks in such a small voice.

“Once you cross the threshold of those doors, there is no going back,” she says, waving her hand at them.

She’s talking about the three doors to the right of our throne room. Baz’s parents exist in the realm of the middle. His parents were good people, ordinary people—they went to the Meadows. I bloom wildflowers there that blow with the grain whenever I get the chance.

My partner’s still uncertain; she’s still testing him because if he wasn’t truly decided on saving Simon, one of those doors would’ve opened up to claim him.

They’re all sealed shut.

“Will you return and make the choice between the life you know on Earth and him?” she asks.

She spares a suspicious look at the doors again. They still don’t move.

“—Will you sacrifice a peaceful eternity to be with your Star?”

“And have peace with Simon instead,” I finish.

“—Will you give up your family to save your Star?”

“You will be with Simon.”

“—But _only_ if you choose him. Do you, Tyrannus?”

“Will you save him?”

“Yes!” he shouts with love spilling from his heart. He clears his throat and composes himself once again, “Yes, I do.”

She looks one more time at the doors…

Then sighs in defeat and nods.

I get up from my throne and lean over to place a kiss on my wife’s cheek. I knew she’d respect this test.

I gesture for Baz to walk up the stairs to us and when he gets to the top, I see even clearer that he’s just a boy. But a boy _so_ in love he’s become something else entirely. I start to tear up.

“Let me show you back to the surface, Baz.” And with a tear falling over my cheek and a smile pressed into them…

I give him a good shove back down the stairs with all my magic.

He’s grabbing at the air as he falls backwards off the stairs, but right before his back crashes onto the steps, he disappears from the throne room, and it’s just me and my wife again.

“I told you he’d win you over. Did you have to give him such a scare?”

She’s laughing now, all easy smile and amusement now that it’s just us. This is the most action we’ve gotten in centuries.

She is my love, my match—I hope Baz finds a way to get back to his.

 

 

**Baz**

Ebb _pushed me_ down the bloody stairs _._

But right when I know I’m about to feel my back break and skull crack on the stone steps, I’m plunging into water, falling backwards into it.

The current isn’t strong like before, it’s not sucking me down from the surface. I’m just falling slowly, trying to register where the hell I am, until I find my footing on something soft. I kick off the sandy bottom and shoot up, breaking the surface and gasping for air. I still don’t know if it’s out of habit or necessity now.

And I’m not dead.

But I’m not alive.

What am I?

I swim to the shallows until I stand chest deep in water and when I reach up to push back my hair from my eyes, I catch a glimpse of my hand in the daylight.

My skin has this strange, pale, grayish hue, similar to the cloaked ferryman and the gatekeeper. I wonder what the rest of me looks like—what my _face_ looks like. I’m vain. I should be happy I’m back, but what if Simon doesn’t like this new me? This not-alive me, not-dead me.

I hear an excited neigh from the other side of the pool. Agatha is standing with Ursa, waiting for me at the edge. I wade over to them, grabbing onto her arm as she helps me pull myself up the ledge of the boulder and out of the water. Water cascades off me and crashes onto the rocks.

Great. I’m wet again and still so cold I’m nearly numb. The still waters of the pool resume its swirling vortex under the waterfall in what I now know is The Entrance to the Underworld.

And I’m the only being that I know besides a god to ever come back out of it.

Ursa neighs again, struggling for my attention.

“Shhh… Easy, girl,” I say, running a hand over her. She jerks back at my touch. So, I guess it’s not just me that feels my lack of heat.

“She didn’t want to leave,” Agatha says. “She knew you’d be back.”

I keep petting her and she gets used to my touch. I’m different, she knows it, but I’m still me.

“I’m glad she’s here because I need to get back to the house as quickly as possible.”

“What are you going to do?”

I shake off as much water as I can and say, pointing at the sky, “I need to get up there.”

“Don’t ask me, I’m not leaving my forest defenseless just because you’re not resourceful enough to figure out a way to your boy-friend.”

“I have to do it myself.”

“The sullen Queen say that?” she asks.

“She _highly_ suggested it. And, I don’t feel like testing her forgiveness.” I think for a second then remember Fiona’s comment. Fly. “I need to fly. Can you get us home?”

“I give Ursa my blessing,” Agatha says, looking pensive. “Get back to your house. I have things to do.” She breaks into a run like the huntress she is, going behind a tree. She just disappears, never appearing on the other side of the trunk.

The sky seems so dim. Agatha doesn’t matter now; I need to go. I mount Ursa and turn us around.

“Come on, girl. Hyah!”

 

 

**Simon**

“Simon! Simon! Look!” Pen cries at me. I’m tired. We’ve been sitting against the balcony railing for hours. He’s dead. Sucked down into that whirlpool. He hasn’t resurfaced. It’s the Underworld though, he won’t.

But I tell myself that he isn’t gone. That’s what Pen keeps saying to me.

We don’t know how, but Ebb says he’s not, and I trust Baz because he’s intelligent and dead clever—even against a bunch of gods. He’s special. I told him that the first time we met and I meant it. I do know how to pick out the special humans and Baz had taken my breath away and my heart in just the time of the eclipse.

I roll my head against the banister, skeptical of Penny’s enthusiasm, and focus back down at the place where Baz took his own life.

I see him on Ursa, slapping the reins down before they take off sprinting.

“Baz?” I murmur, confused. “Pen,” I say with more excitement. “Is that really Baz?”

I feel myself grow stronger, more steady and solid like the wind can’t knock me down with just a whisper anymore.

“He’s back. Penny, he came back!” I laugh and grip the railing on either side of my head so I can poke my head through and watch him.

“He did it. He passed the test,” she begins to cry.

I hear a sharp gasp and sniffling. I don’t want to look away from him now that I have him back in my sight, but I can’t ignore what’s going on next to me and turn to see Penny furiously wiping at her eyes, a disgusted expression on her face.

I immediately give her hug but ask, “Pen, why are you crying? You don’t cry.” She hates being like this.

“Because I didn’t really know what was going on,” she sniffles. “And, it was so out of my control! And, I broke your heart all over again and—and—” She buries her face into my neck and now I realize just how exhausted she must be; has been the whole time. How exhausting I’ve been. “—and I thought that I bloody killed your boyfriend!”

“It’s okay, Pen—”

“No!” she tears away from me, face stubborn and fired up, and wipes her cheeks. She takes a few deep breaths and gains control of herself again. She’s got that look that says she’s on a mission. “Not okay. Not yet. You’re still in trouble and he’s still down there and I’ve got to figure out how to get him to you.”

“…To… me? That’s impossible, Penny.”

“This is _Baz_ we’re talking about. I’ve learned not to underestimate him, and if you can’t go down there, I’m going to bring Baz up here.”

I’m gaping like a fish. “W—What? _How?_ ”

“I don’t know yet, but I know he’s going to need help.” She kisses me on the forehead and stands up, towering over me. “ _Don’t_ fade out. I’ll be back in a few, Si,” she smiles and dissolves into moondust heading towards Earth.

 

 

**Baz**

When I get to the grounds, Fiona and Nico have already spotted Ursa and are running out to meet me.

“Baz!” Nico shouts.

“What in the hell is going on?!” Fiona shouts as she runs across the lawn to me. “First you say you’re never coming back and now you’re back—why are you jerking me around, you little…” she stops, talking and running all at once when I get close enough.

“You’re looking kind of pale, Baz…” Nico tilts his head like looking at me from a new angle is going to change the new tint of my skin.

“You look like Death chewed you up and spat you back because even _they_ didn’t want you,” she says.

“Really took that ‘affection is making you look old’ comment to heart, huh?” I smile and swing my leg down to the ground. Nico takes Ursa from me and I hug Fiona because I truly thought I’d never see her again.

“You’re cold as death, too!” she jumps at the contact. “What happened to you?” She shivers and pushes me back. “I love you and all, boyo, but you’re going to turn me into ice.”

I look at the both of them as seriously as I can. “I know this is going to sound… unbelievable.”

“As unbelievable as the Sun being your boyfriend?” Nico asks like he’s actually worried there are stranger things in the world. There are.

“I’m cold as death because… I am… dead?”

 _“What?”_ She glares.

“I sort of sacrificed myself, went down to the Underworld where I had to bargain with the Queens of it to save Simon’s life, but one of them is named Ebb and I think she was on my side from the beginning, and it worked but they didn’t trade my life for Simon’s, they did something to me and sent me back here so I can find a way to Simon, and—” I slap her hand away from my face. “—stop poking me, Fi!”

She ignores me, pinches my cheek, and tugs at it experimentally. She lets it go with a snap when the freeze becomes too much.

“So, you’re dead?” she asks curiously.

“No, not exactly.”

“Wait, didn’t the Moon girl say you couldn’t survive up there with Simon?” Nico asks. I think about it for a second, he’s onto something. “If you’re not technically _alive_ then you don’t have to worry about surviving and all that anymore, right?”

“He’s cracked it,” Penny says from behind us. I didn’t even notice her, it’s hard to see her moondust sparkling down in the daylight.

“Penny!” I exclaim. “Is Simon—”

“He’s okay. You scared him close to death, but he’s back for the time being. That time _being_ short. He says he’s got a while in him, but if you look at him Baz…” she trails off worriedly.

“So, what’s the plan?” Fiona interjects. “How do we get you to him?”

“You’re not going to argue?” I ask in disbelief. “You’re not going to try to keep me down here?”

She puts her hands on her hips and says, “You said you _killed_ yourself and argued with the gods for him. What makes you think I’m under the illusion that _I_ can do anything that will stop you from saving him?”

“Thank you, Fi,” I whisper and touch her hand. She recoils like I’ve burned her.

“Seriously, love you, Baz. But, you’d make an icicle freeze to death.”

“Go on then,” Nico says to me. “What’s the plan?”

“The only way to get up in the sky is to fly. I figured maybe with a little creativity and Penny’s moondust magic, I could figure out a way to get up there.”

Penny looks guiltily at me. “I don’t think I’m capable of something like that,” she says.

“But I am,” I hear confidently as Agatha magically appears out from behind Ursa.

“Who is she?” Fiona whispers to me.

“You know me as Agatha, _Goddess of the Hunt, Protector of the Forest_ and all who dwell there,” she says like she doesn’t have to put any effort into being spectacular. The looks on Fiona and Nico’s faces only prove that right though. “I bring my second blessing,” she says and drops two burlaps on the ground with a heavy thud.

“What are those?” I ask.

“You said you needed wings,” she says, kicking a sack onto its side. Hundreds of white feathers—long, stubby, skinny, thick—all cascade out of it. “I happen to know a lot of birds in the world who were willing to donate a feather.”

I look at them then back up to her. “Why are they all white?”

She rolls her eyes and waves her hand. Suddenly we’re all in the house and I sigh because this would be so much easier if a _goddess_ would just wave me and herself up to the Sun Palace.

“Yeah, why are they white, Aggie?” Penny asks, unfazed by the jump. Nico and Fiona are jumpy and questioning the physics of reality and the rules of magic next to us as they examine the new surroundings.

“Aesthetic,” Agatha answers.

“Will you help me?” I ask.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Oh, move over,” Penny barks and shoves Agatha out of the way.

Agatha examines her nails and says, “I’ll see you later.” She starts walking towards the double doors leading outside to the garden. “Or maybe not. I’ve been too far from my forests already.” Then she slips out the door and turns, but I don’t see her pass anywhere outside through the windows again.

“Come on, people. Let’s get these things going, a star’s dying,” Penny orders.

That sobers me up and I cross the room looking for something to sketch on while Fiona, Nico, and Penny pour all the feathers and spread them out.

~:~:~:~:~:~:~

After brainstorming with Nico, we decide that the only real way to get the quills to stick is by something that can harden and adhere to it. I don’t know if wax is exactly the best route to go, but Penny and I are desperate because it’s still in the afternoon and Simon’s light is already dim outside.

She manifests the wax with her magic and I survey all the feathers, lined up according to size. We’ve got it all organized when Nico comes back from the shed with wood for the structure of the wings and leather straps pried off of extra saddles from the stables. It seems crazy, but Agatha wouldn’t have bothered to get herself involved and procure all these feathers if it was impossible.

I have to tell myself that.

But then Fiona and Penny start arguing about which way is best to lay the feathers and don’t stop until I cut in front of them and just start doing it myself.

They argue with me, and I only send remarks like, “Nagging won’t get this done any faster,” until they realized I’m right—as expected—and follow suit. We lay feather after feather until wings begin to manifest themselves, and after hours of painstaking labor, I slip the straps over my shoulder, gripping onto a wing now backing my arm.

“Think it’ll work?” I ask Pen.

“They’re blessed feathers from _me_.” Agatha appears behind us. “You could’ve gotten up to Simon with just a handful attached to your shoulders. They’d flap for you and everything.”

 _“What?!”_ Penny nearly growls.

“Why didn’t you tell us that before we went hours laying all these?!” I shout because we have no idea how Simon is doing now that we’ve turned out of his light and into the night.

“Where’s the fun in that?” she says in flippant satisfaction, smoothing down a stray feather on my arm.

“You think Simon’s having fun right now? Are you trying to kill him?!” Penny practically snarls.

“Not at all. Penny’s being too dramatic. He’s got time. It’s shining brighter than before in my forests to the West. Must’ve given him hope again. But, are you sure about this Baz? Because my blessings fade. They’ll just be ordinary feathers once they’re done being used.”

“Of course, I am. Don’t be ridiculous,” I say and roll my eyes back at her.

I just rolled my eyes at a goddess, but I also raised my voice at one earlier today, too.

I place the wings back down on the ground and turn to Fiona and Nico again.

Nico hugs me then jumps away instantly in regret like I've burned him. He tells me Simon better be good to me then gives me a moment with Fiona while he struggles to carry one side of the wings out the door. Penny just effortlessly lifts her end with one hand and follows.

“I have to lose you twice in one day?” Fiona grumbles. We walk out under the darkened sky.

“I’ll still be here. It’ll just be up there,” I say, pointing as if that somehow makes the distance smaller. “And Penny can bring back and forth our letters if you ever want to write me.”

“Of course I’ll want to write you,” she frowns and goes for a hug, but stops herself. I’m not embraceable anymore. She rests her hand on my shoulder for as long as she can stand it. “You’ve taken years off my life today. You terror. You bloody menace. Pain in my—”

“I’ll miss you, too,” I smile.

“I love you, boyo.”

“I love you, too. But really, Fiona, affection does age you.”

“Incorrigible bastard,” she smirks.

“Crass wench.” We don’t hide our smiles this time.

“I’ll be flying by your side the whole way,” Penny says to me, already misting the air around her with silver sparks.

“Better keep that promise and write to us. Send Penny to us as soon as you’ve saved Simon,” Nico says, tying up the leather straps—

Then rips off the ones I was using to hold the wings up.

“Nick, what are you doing?!” I bellow.

“What? The goddess said they’d flap for you if you just strapped them on. So, stop whining and put them on already. Simon’s waiting for you,” he shushes me.

Fiona’s tearing up, but she’s hiding it by helping me slip the straps securely onto my shoulders.

“Agatha, how does this work?” I ask.

“How does a bird fly?” she says. “Instinct.”

“What in the hell does that mean?” Penny asks, but then I close my eyes and concentrate.

I feel the weight of the wax disappear from my shoulders. I can feel the wooden skeleton flex and bend. I jump into the air—

And I’m _up._

 

 

**Simon**

I watched Baz race across fields and over hills on Ursa. I wonder if he realized how much ground he was covering and how he made it to the house so quickly. Must be Aggie’s doing.

Ursa was always a magical creature, but right then she was _magical_. She was phasing through forests much too fast to be anything but. That’s the power of Agatha’s blessings. I wish I had that kind of power. Maybe that way I could find a way for Baz to live up here with me.

I saw Fiona flinch from his hug when he reached his home and then how she poked at his skin. He’s… paler now. Beautiful as ever, but in a new way. Something about the Underworld has changed him, but before I could really examine him from my balcony, he disappeared with everyone. Aggie’s doing again. I don’t know where he went after that before his land spun out of view.

I must’ve fallen asleep on the tile. I’m curled up because I’m cold and still so exhausted. I just want to sleep forever, but I want to know what they’re doing, what Baz is going to do next. So I push off my demise, at least until Pen comes back and tells me it’s impossible and that I’ll never get to feel him again.

I miss watching for him, seeing him. I’m dying and they have some grand scheme to fix me. But Baz has already died and come back again for me and I’m not sure I’m worth all that trouble. He’d have to leave everything behind for me, his family, his life, eternal peace with his ancestors—with his parents. He’d have to leave his world…

I roll over towards the edge and push my head between the banisters and instantly feel a jolt of electricity, more life than I have in months. My eyes can’t get any wider and I’m trying to make sense of it.

I see Penny and all her dust swirling next to a pair of bright white wings. I jump to my feet, suddenly a spring in my step, and clumsily run towards the other end of the balcony where they’re ascending to. I throw myself half over the railing and watch them grow closer.

It _is_ Baz _._ And he has wings—and he’s coming to me!

They’re almost here. _He’s_ almost here. And I feel my skin burning again as fire courses through my veins and brings my blood back to that comfortable boil I’m meant to have. I look at my hands, they’re glowing again, and the Earth looks more vibrant because the Sun Palace is shining brighter; because it’s him! He’s here and he’s mine and he died for me and he came back for me—

As soon as he’s within distance, I reach out for him, waving my hand for him to grab hold of. He flies higher and higher, feathers falling from his wings.

And then I catch him. I feel him, and he’s cold but I’m warm again and his coolness feels amazing. We match again, he’s my match and I’m his.

“Baz!” I cry and I pull him over the side while Pen helps.

He stumbles when his feet hit the tile and starts to shrug off his wings. That’s when I see that they’re falling apart, magic keeping the wax and feathers intact oozing away with the drips.

“Baz… Are you sure about this?! If you stay here, your wings will melt. You won’t be able to get back home!”

Pen helps slip the melting mess off his back. As soon as they fall, he throws his arms around me and yanks me to him—hugs me tighter—starts pressing cool lips against every inch of my shoulder and neck—runs his hand up into my hair and _grips_ like he’s never going to let me disappear again.

He’s pouring all his love into me and I can feel it flow through me like a current.

I feel _alive_.

But he hasn’t answered me and his wings are still melting into puddles on the balcony.

“Baz, your—”

“You stupid—” he kisses me, “—ridiculous—” again, “—bloody idiot,” he finally laughs. “I don’t want to go home! Not if I can’t have you there with me.”

“I’m stuck here,” I say, snaking my hand up through his embrace and bringing his face to look at me. “Baz, I have a duty and I can’t do that to the world again. If I do, the gods, they’ll still destroy you!”

“Well, it’s my turn then.”

“What?”

“You stopped everything for me. It’s my turn because I love you. And I choose you, Simon. I choose you over everything.”

I’m grinning so wide and it’s been so long since I have that I can feel the stretch burn in my cheeks and my eyes wet and bleary because I never thought I’d see him again, and now he’s here; saying he’ll give it all up for me because he _loves_ me, and he wants _me_.

He tucks my head under his chin and holds me close while I start to lose it.

I’m so happy, I’m so impossibly happy—

“Shh, Simon. It’s okay,” he murmurs.

He nuzzles his face in my hair, and I can see stardust falling from it again. I’m practically spilling magic now.

I lean back and smile pathetically at him with tear-stained cheeks.

“Hello, darling,” I gasp out in a cry because I know he loves it when I call him that.

“Hello, love,” he whispers, and he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and held, and the last time I was able to hold him, I—I…

I realize everything I said before, all of it hitting me at one time. In panic, I start pressing kisses to every place I can on his face just as he had with me.

“I’m sorry—” I say, trying to soothe away all the pain I caused. “I’m so sorry for everything I said! You’re not just a human! You’re amazing and perfect, and I don’t just love you the way you love me because I love you so much more! And it _hurt_ me not being able to see you or be with you and—”

“I know, Simon,” he says and chases my lips with his own until he catches them. He presses into me even closer and I feel the tension in me dissolve.

“I just wanted you to move on,” I plead against his lips for forgiveness. “I wanted you to find a normal, ordinary boyfriend to do normal, ordinary things with and just be… normal.”

“Pitches don’t do normal,” he smirks, “or ordinary.” Baz rests his forehead against mine and bumps my nose before sighing serenely. “I can feel my skin again,” he says. “I missed being so _warm_. I missed you. I missed you so much, Simon. I’m sorry if I’m… different. I think I had to be this way in order to leave the Underworld.”

“How _are_ you surviving this?”

“I’m not alive. Not dead. Something in between.”

“You’re gray-ish,” I say to him, holding him back by his shoulders so I can get a good look at him. “And you’re still cold. We’re at the Sun Palace, you shouldn’t be able to be this cold.”

“Too cold?” he asks self-consciously.

“The perfect cold,” I say. “I run a lot hotter up here.”

“Too pale?”

“It brings out your eyes,” I smile.

Pen coughs awkwardly. We both look over. I’ll be honest, I forgot she was even there. But she’s grinning, so I’m guessing she’s enjoying our reunion as much as we are.

“You seem to be alive and good again, Si, so I’ll leave you to it. I have a Moon to get back to.” She’s disappearing into sparkle and dust when we hear, “Have fun, boys!” And she’s gone off the balcony in a flash.

We’re alone.

We’re together.

Nothing can tear us apart again.

And, like a floodgate, he’s soft and sweet and pure, and I can feel myself growing even brighter.

“Baz, can we be boyfriends again then?” I manage to squeeze out between all his attention to my mouth.

He ignores me and the softness disappears. He latches onto my bottom lip ferociously and tugs.

“Baz?” I ask muffled.

Then he runs his teeth along my jaw and mouths down the column of my neck, mumbling, “I’ve been dreaming about doing this for two months. Don’t ruin it with inane questions…”

“I’m just checking, is all,” I say a little breathlessly because it was only one night, but my skin remembers everything about his mouth.

His laugh blows a chill against my neck. “Yes, Simon. We’re boyfriends.”

“Okay, good,” I gasp.

I hear flapping though and peek over to see a raven blinking back with four eyes, touching down on the railing.

“Baz, we have an audience.”

Baz stops the bruises he’s trying to suck into my neck and looks up. He waves and greets it.

“Hello, Ebb!” he laughs. The bird caws, circles around us, and disappears midair in one swoop. A piece of paper floats down to the balcony.

I pick it up and read it out loud:

 

_‘Tyrannus,_

_Penny has informed us that you’ve chosen Simon—that you sacrificed your wings and the surface for the Sun. I am satisfied with your tests._

_It may take some time, but my queen insists on escorting you down to the surface every now and then during her leave from the Underworld. It is within her power and right to do as she wishes during Springtime and Summer, so I have no say in the matter. But do know, I disapprove of your coming and going. Order must be maintained—’_

 

The ink slices against the page like the pen was stolen away, and at the bottom of the note in a hasty, clumsier scrawl, it reads:

 

_‘P.S. Baz, tell Simon I expect an invitation in a bit when you boys are all caught up! With love, Fbb’_

 

“Who’s Fbb?” I ask with a tilt of my head.

“ _Ebb,_ you dolt. She cried on the ink,” he smiles.

He looks back at me and I don’t see pain. I don’t see heartbreak or betrayal. I just see joy in those deep storm cloud eyes. Then it lights up with a bolt of mischief when he asks, voice low and gravelly, “Now. You don’t happen to have a bedroom in this place, do you?”

I know he’s trying to get me to play along. Say something like, “Sure, darling, let me give you a tour,” with a drawn out pause and a sultry wink.

But I don’t operate that way.

I toss my head back with a laugh then yank and drag Baz behind me in impatience across the balcony and in through the doors of my darkened room.

I push him down onto the plush cushions of my bed and crawl on top of him, wrapping our hands together and tilting his chin up with the other until our lips meet. Baz lifts his hand to my neck and I just feel the ice of his fingertips leaving goosebumps over my skin while his mouth soothes the burn of mine.

 

**Baz**

When he pulls back he gazes down at me in a way that makes my heart soar.

“You’re my favorite creature to ever exist, Baz.”

“Even more than you like Ursa?” I tease.

 

**Simon**

He reaches up to run his thumb over my bottom lip, smiles sweetly, and says, “Out of all of them, Simon—you’re my favorite star.”

“Even more than the ones in Orion’s belt?” I tease back.

 

**Baz**

“I love you so much, Simon,” I whisper long and slow, so reverently and taking my time to stress every word. Because he’s my Star and there’s no rush anymore; no one to separate us; no one to tell us we can’t be together.

He presses his lips to mine.

And, I see his glow from behind my closed eyelids. And I feel the heat of his wildfire at the tips of his fingers running up my stomach, bringing sensation back into my numb skin everywhere he touches—sharing what makes him _alive_ with _me_.

It’s all just as I remember. The smell of toasting almonds during autumn. The constellations of freckles and moles across his glowing skin.

It’s fire, and smoke, and licking flames all over again.

“I love you, too, Baz,” he whispers back.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell that I love the myth of Persephone and Hades? Because I do SO much. See you in the epilogue, lovelies <3 :D Oh, and again, it'll cover some stuff and show a glimpse of what happens after Baz settles down at the palace with Simon!


	7. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Can we invite the nymphs? Oh, they’ll be so jealous, Baz. They love Simon. They might even weep, it’ll be fantastic."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long one, but it's all happy, it's all fluff, maybe predictable, but, eh, I hope you enjoy it all the same. (I just had so many ideas swirling around.) And, I just wanted to give them the ending they deserved after all the crap I put them through. Oh, and I've got a slight Paul McCartney. See you at the bottom!

**Simon**

Whatever happens in the Underworld usually stays in the Underworld because the Queens keep everything hush-hush, and none of the other gods ever visit or want anything to do with the dead. They all like their games and parties and drinking too much to bother themselves with a place that I hear is too quiet.

And this is Ebb we’re talking about. She’s going to give us as much peace and quiet before they all come at us because she’s been rooting for us since the beginning, since the roses in Baz’s garden labyrinth first whispered to her that I had gone running through holding hands with the human boy who never smiled at them.

Even the roses knew the only time Baz’s lips moved was to smirk or sneer or say something clever and dripping in sarcasm.

He’s easy with me though. The only time Baz sneers now is when I try to make him eat.

“Stop staring,” he mutters, swirling the food in the bowl I put in front of him. We’re sitting together at the end of the long table that stretches halfway across the palace banquet room because I finally have someone here, someone to spend time with me, eat with me, and actually appreciate the place.

Baz bends a little and sniffs at the bowl, but I know from personal experience it’s odorless. There’s nothing to prepare you for it.

“This is ambrosia,” he clarifies.

“Yeah.”

“Food of the gods…”

“Yeah.”

“The gods eat this… mush?”

“Just try it, Baz.” He watches me warily. I’m trying too hard to bite back smiles and I can tell I’m glowing brighter from my enthusiasm.

“Alright…” He finally eats a spoonful of the ambrosia, but as soon as it touches his tongue, he grimaces. “ _Ew,_ no.” I can see him fighting to swallow the rest in his mouth. He coughs a little after and tosses his spoon down with a clatter, sneering at the bowl. “No, I don’t like this at all.”

“No one does,” I finally reveal. “I hated it the first time I tried it. Still hate it. It’s vile. I think the bosses just get so drunk that everything starts to taste good.”

He glares at me. “Then why did you make _me_ try it?”

I smirk. “Initiation.”

He downs the rest of his wine, trying to wash the taste from his mouth. “ _Please—_ no more god-like tests. I’ve had my fill of tests for a lifetime.”

I must make a face. I do feel guilty, but not over the ambrosia. I still have this little bit of guilt that won’t go away no matter how much he smiles at me, about Baz giving up everything and his human life to come save me. Call it an entire existence of neglect, aside from Penny, Ebb, and the rarest occasion that Aggie popped in. Sometimes I just don’t feel like I’m worth it.

But he does. And he leans over and grabs either side of my face and looks dead serious.

“Stop that. I’m never going to regret anything, Simon. I always want you.”

I like how he doesn’t say ‘need’ even though we do need each other. My dramatic expiring proved that. The way he’s skinnier than when we first met proves that.

I wave my hand and the ambrosia disappears. I’ve got a spread of food in front of us now. I flick my wrist again and I conjure up scones like the ones Micah’s mother makes, too.

“No more ambrosia,” I say and start slicing a loaf of bread for him. “But you _are_ eating this.”

“I honestly don’t think I even have to eat. And, you don’t have to feed me.” Baz sighs and rolls his eyes when I cover the slice in cheese and meat.

“Maybe I just like feeding my boyfriend.”

“I’m like you now though. I don’t need anything. I don’t think I can even change anymore.”

“If that’s the case, I’m never letting you anywhere near a pair of shears. You’re too pretty with long hair to risk it,” I say, stubbornly stacking more cheese onto the slice. I practically shove it into his mouth.

“Why are you so set on me eating; trying to fatten me up?” he mumbles through his chewing. He covers his mouth with the instinct to be mannered at least a little, but he’s more relaxed with them now. Which is nice for me because I never had to worry about them to begin with. He raises an eyebrow at me knowingly and asks, “Is it the same reason why you’ve been trying to mend all the broken statues and paintings?”

“They look good as new, don’t they?” I avoid the question and start buttering up a scone for him.

“I can’t eat that much butter, Simon. I don’t think _anyone_ can.”

“This is a lot?”

“This is enough to kill a human.”

“Good thing we’re not human—” I ignore the guilt again. “Pen always said it would make me fat. Says it makes humans fat. But she and I can kind of look anyway we want if we try hard enough. All the gods can. I don’t know if we can gain weight either. But in your case, I think it’s worth a try.” I hold it up to his face, waiting for him to swallow his last bite.

He glares at the scone and then at me. When he swallows and opens his mouth, probably to tell me to back off, I shove the scone in too fast for him. He almost chokes.

“It’s not that I don’t think you look good,” I say. “You’re the most handsome human I’ve ever seen. Even the God of Beauty would get jealous. But he’s also the God of Love, so maybe he’d just try to seduce you away from me.”

Baz swallows and swats away my hand holding the scone. “Even with all the paleness?”

“I told you, it suits you. And it kind of gives you your own glow now, too. It’ll make you seem more immortal when the other—” I shut my mouth.

Oops.

He smirks at me. “ _Simon_ ,” he sings, “are you planning on showing me off? Is that what this is all about?”

I feel more heat than usual rise to my cheeks. I take a new wine bottle and pull the cork out with my teeth. He’s used to wine more than I am, so I don’t have to worry about that. He’ll fit in perfectly with the gods once corks start popping out of bottles.

I spit it out and he rolls his eyes at my table manners.

“Simon,” he calls again.

I sigh because I didn’t want to make him as nervous as I am. “It’s just that Ebb and Hades kept everything secret for us so we had time to just… be with each other before the rest of the Hierarchy starts getting nosy and drops in to see you, and I just don’t want them to bother you because they’re in everyone’s business all the time; and they don’t care about respecting humans or anyone that’s not involved in all the politics—”

He leans forward and drags my face to his by the neck of my tunic. He kisses me, hard and so slow our lips barely move because Baz likes to take his time doing everything to me, now that we don’t have to rush.

I’m anxious and practically boiling over, but his touch douses the fire in me a little and calms me down before I feel like I’m going to combust from too much of my energy.

He releases me and says, “Everything is going to be perfect. It’s all going to be fine now. I’m not a god, but I’m not as delicate as you think I am. And, remember what Ebb told us last week? Anyone who threatens me, or you, or _us_ is going to find themselves hunted by Cerberus and dragged down to her domain. Which did shock me, to be honest. I never expected that kind of power from Ebb.”

“Oh, Ebb’s got loads of power,” I say. “It’s what made the sullen Queen like her so much to begin with.” I call Hades that sometimes because of Aggie. “Someone was trying to kill one of the forest spirits and Ebb ripped him to pieces in a bed of flowers back when she was just a Maiden of Springtime.”

Baz looks shocked, mouth parted with so many questions.

“There were vines and thorns and blood all over that meadow. It was kind of sick to watch, yeah, but it was _Ebb_ so I had to watch. I can only imagine what kinds of stuff she can do now that she’s a full-fledged goddess.”

Baz is just looking at me wide-eyed. He doesn’t even fight the bite of food I feed to him while I talk.

“Y’know, I asked her why she didn’t try to push herself into the Hierarchy before she met Hades and became queen. But she said just because she could disembowel a man with some roots didn’t mean she wanted to live as a weapon for the bosses. I like that. She’s too good for them.”

Baz is speechless. I know I’ve changed the motherly figure Ebb has become to him lately into something fearsome. And it’s Summer again on Earth now that I’m back to working again which means she’s back on the surface for a little while. She visits us and blooms more plants as an excuse to see us together. The palace is starting to look like a greenery, but Baz loves it, so I do, too.

I make him eat until he’s tired and bored. And then I apologize again for taking away his appetite during those two months, but he just tells me to shut up and rolls his eyes for the hundredth time today.

“It’s not your fault I was wallowing in self-pity. I’m sorry for almost causing you to die.”

“But that’s not your fault, that was mine,” I protest.

“Oh, look. How the tables have turned,” he says dryly as we walk down the marbled halls together.

We do this sometimes, and it’s like I’m seeing this place for the first time again. Because when it was just me, there was no reason to be anywhere but my room or my balcony really. I just watched Earth all the time or read books on my bed. Now, I get to share this place with someone, someone I love, and it feels more like a home.

“I can’t believe I live in a palace now,” Baz says as he bends his head back to admire the carved mouldings and the painted ceilings while we walk. “This is the fantasy, isn’t it?” He brings his chin down and looks back at me with a smile. “A dashing prince coming out of nowhere to sweep me off my feet and take me to his castle.”

“I think you’re more of a prince than I am,” I say. “You knew what the small forks were for in the kitchens.” We do have kitchens, too, because I asked one day when Micah’s mother wrote down a box of human recipes for me to entertain myself with.

Baz never cooked and doesn’t bother now that he says he doesn’t get hungry, but he was amused to watch me try to look domestic and human. I asked him if I really did. He said besides the magic waving to make ingredients appear and start fires with my fingertips, I did. I don’t know if he was being sarcastic, but he came up behind me and hugged me while I kneaded flour into dough. So, I guess I don’t really care much.

We keep walking the checkered halls, but he stops us to admire one of the many blindingly white marble statues lining the walls. And this one is of me. I look proud and headstrong in it. This is who I was meant to be when they created me. All duty and determination.

“Look. You have your own statue. I’ve married into royalty,” Baz teases. 

“We’re not married,” I say.

He rolls his eyes. “Obviously. I think I would’ve remembered it.”

“After we hold the feast, we can, and we’ll have more deities to invite that way,” I think out loud, still staring at my own marble face. “I wonder if Hades will come with Ebb. I heard it wasn’t exactly a packed house down in the Underworld for theirs. But that would mean that the Underworld would be left unattended if she did come. Maybe we could at least get Ebb, but it’ll have to be during the Spring or Summer then. Really, that’s when everyone’s out and about though, not just the humans. And, the Queen of the Gods officiates everyone’s ceremonies and wherever she goes, the top of the Hierarchy goes. And there’ll be Aggie and Pen of course, and—”

“Stop rambling,” he says. I only ramble with him. I feel comfortable enough to let my thoughts and speech meld and it’s just easier to speak. “Did you really just… did you just propose to me in all that train of consciousness?”

“But… I mean… I thought it was obvious that we would?” I say. It’s usually not this way. I’m usually the more oblivious one. Guess he was right, the tables have turned temporarily. “I mean, you’re still my boyfriend, but we’ll just be boyfriends and married, too.”

“Simon, boyfriend is not an exact translation of ‘lover.’”

“Oh, well… I like calling you my boyfriend. It’s one of the Earth things I liked.”

“I’ll be calling you my husband, just so we’re clear. But, I suppose we can make our own rules.”

“So, husband-boyfriend then? Compromise.”

“In all my days of wondering how this moment would turn out, I never thought my fiancé would ask me to call him ‘husband-boyfriend.’” He looks at me with a withering stare, rolls his eyes, and tilts his head down to kiss the corner of my mouth. “Come on, _boyfriend_ —” he says with something like sarcasm and strolls away from me. “We have a feast to plan.”

“Are you going to say it like that until we get married?” I pout at his back.

“The sooner we have the feast, the sooner we get married, so hurry up!” he shouts over his shoulder, heading down to the west wing.

He’s already halfway down the hall when I take one last look back up at the statue. Strong and fierce and unwavering from his obligation. He’d never fall in love. He’d never be bonded to anyone or anything but his duty.

But Baz makes me feel free and eager and so bloody alive that I grin and start running after him. He hears me coming and starts sprinting away with long strides down the hall with a laugh. But I’m impatient, and impulsive, and not my statue at all, so I turn into stardust and appear right before him in a trail of light. I catch him as he runs straight into me.

“Cheater. No fair…” he whines into my neck, “ _boyfriend._ ”

I roll my eyes and let out an exasperated sigh, walking us backwards into our room. “I have ways of making you stop saying that, you know.”

“Oh really? Is that a threat, _boyfriend_?”

I smirk at him, flipping him down onto our bed when the backs of my legs hit the cushions. He’s completely pinned under me when I hover my mouth above his and press against him until the gray of his eyes blacken. “You’ll be shouting out ‘Simon’ soon enough.”

“—Seriously? At it _again_?” Pen announces, materializing at the balcony doors.

Baz sighs. “He’s just proposed to me and you’re ruining it, Penny.”

She gasps excitedly, runs over, and jumps onto the bed right next to us, ignoring that I’m still straddling Baz’s thigh, our hands interlocked together and everything.

“So, when are we throwing the celebration?” she eggs on.

“Spring-wedding—” “Summer-wedding—” we say at the same time.

“Spring,” Baz says challengingly.

“Summer,” I say back.

“You suggested Spring. For Ebb, remember?”

“I also said Summer, too.”

“But we met in the Spring,” he argues.

“No, we met in Winter,” I argue back.

He’s still under me and grumbles, “It’s close enough.”

“You just don’t want to wait until next Summer,” I tease.

He blushes because I’ve caught him. But then he plays the dirtiest move he could possibly conjure up in the moment and says:

“But… we stopped seeing each other in the Summer…”

Penny stifles a laugh with a fake cough because I feel my entire face drop. He’s trying to look sad, but I see all that infuriating smugness hidden underneath.

I shake my head in defeat to Penny. “Spring-wedding,” I agree. I suppose that means we’ll _have_ to have the feast and announce Baz’s presence here sooner.

“This is going to be amazing,” she says gleefully, collapsing onto the bed. “Can we invite the nymphs? Oh, they’ll be so jealous, Baz. They love Simon. They might even weep, it’ll be fantastic.”

I groan, remembering all their aggressive flirting when I was first created. I fall onto my back, sandwiched between the two of them.

It’s the three of us with Baz and Penny enthusiastically making plans. She thinks he should wear green, a dark green; that it’ll go with his new complexion. He says he wants it in the banquet hall with the curtains open so light shines through the stained glass. And, a big arch for us to stand under, too. Pen shares more stories about the nymphs and muses with Baz who laughs and teases me and places kisses on my cheeks when they’re stained a deep amber under my shimmer.

And I’m the luckiest creation to ever exist. 

* * *

 

**Baz**

So, a nymph showed up to the palace to bat his eyes at Simon because he heard that I, the Sun’s human lover, was dead. But instead, he found me lounging naked, save for our sheets, in bed instead.

Naturally, he told the other nymphs, and they let slip to one of the gods that I’m somehow alive and here, and now all the gods know about us.

So much for Simon’s plan to wait until Winter.

Now, Simon is fretting about the palace like the gods can’t just manifest anything specific they want on a whim. He’s nervous because this is the first time so many people are visiting him here, and it’s the first time everyone will be meeting me—the human who traversed the Underworld to save his dying Star.

Because they’ve looked at Simon like he’s something that can be replaced for so long, me actually sacrificing my human life to save his and facing the Queens of Death, well, _stirred_ something as close to sympathy and guilt as they could feel. As miniscule as it is, I’m sure.

I’m a curiosity, to say the least. The only exception that Hades has ever agreed to let walk from her domain.

But, Simon’s nervous energy is making me nervous and I haven’t stopped tapping the hand I usually run across my violin strings when I need to decompress. So, imagine, as impossible as it seems, how much more I could love him when he finds me in the library holding the most exquisitely crafted violin I’ve ever seen. It’s pristine and opaline, shimmering like its absorbing the light around us and _living_ in the grain of the wood.

“Here,” he says, thrusting it at me. I take it, marveling wide-eyed at the masterpiece before he grabs my other hand and places a bow in it. Even the bow is magnificent with the most graceful swan-billed ends I’ve ever seen. I glance back at him and he’s apprehensive like he thinks I won’t like it but hoping I will.

I pluck at the stings and when the vibration reverberates through, a thin veil of stardust falls softly from the body. My eyes can’t widen anymore.

“Play it,” he insists, grabbing hold of my hands and pulling them and the violin up. He stops because he doesn’t know what to do passed that, so I draw it up to my shoulder and rest my jaw against it. It tingles underneath my chin because the wood is so heavenly warm with magic. It’s just like when Simon touches me.

I bring my right hand up and draw the bow across open strings in experimentation. More stardust falls, and suddenly I feel compelled and challenged to see just how much I can make spill from it. I immediately jump into something lively and light. The bow bounces off the strings so easily and the high notes are so crisp that even Ebb’s flowers around us perk up, and when I dip low and build up the melody again, really getting into it, Simon shines brighter.

I shift my attention from the violin to him and transition back into a piece that’s calmer and unhurried. Simon likes this one. I first played it for him by our favorite hideaway on Earth, a pond shrouded in Agatha’s forest that covered his glow and opened into a meadow for Ursa to graze in. It’s a simple melody, dreamy and filled with full, low strokes that weave around an unspoken story of first love.

I stop suddenly and grin at him. I haven’t asked him for anything because I didn’t really need anything else besides him and what’s already in the palace. But he still sensed that I missed something.

“Did you make this?” I ask.

“Can’t you tell? It’s got my magic spilling all over it.” He smiles sheepishly. “I can make you another one if you want.”

“Simon, this is extraordinary—you’re extraordinary.”

“I’ll make you an entire orchestra of instruments, Baz—anything you want if it’ll make you happier here.”

“You’re so—so—”

“Romantic?” he suggests with a hopeful smile.

“Daft.” I step towards him and kiss his frown away. “You’re a dense, downright _stupid_ fool if you think I am anything but the happiest I’ve ever been. Here, in our new home, with you. I do love the violin though. It’s perfect.”

Being here with my Star, at the actual Palace of the Sun, together, for what I can only hope is eternity, has made me the most blessed creature ever to exist in his light.

There are not enough metaphors or pretty words to truly grasp and convey just how _happy_ I am.

 

**Simon**

I mean it. I’ll spend up all my magic to bring him anything he wants. He mentioned on Earth that he was interested in dabbling with in pianoforte. That one’ll be next then.

But I think he does like the violin. He hasn’t put it down the whole day and brought it out on the balcony, out of the shade of the palace, just tilting and rocking it to see how the light shifts within it. I watch him, amused at his amusement, then close my eyes and listen to him play for me.

I don’t know how much time passes, but eventually he stops and says, “This is usually when my fingers feel like they’re going to bleed.”

I jump from my chair by the railing and seat myself next to him on the bench, pulling his hand from the violin’s neck.

They’re indented, but not bleeding or blistering like I was worried they’d be. They have the barest hint of pink in the pale tips.

“Being undead has its perks,” he says. “Looks like I can live and play forever now.”

“Good. Because I’ll never get tired of it,” I say and kiss each finger.

“I can definitely feel that though,” he smirks. We’re still trying to work out his new nuances. He’s sensitive to temperature, for sure. Said he felt completely numb in the Underworld, freezing on Earth, but comfortable up here. And that when I touch him, it’s like his body comes alive with fire which is why he’s always snuggled up into my side; and practically sits in my lap when he reads aloud the books from the pile he’s made in the corner of the library.

I tease him about the pile sometimes because it just keeps growing bigger and more chaotic looking.

“Well, more of them appear every other day!” he says exasperatedly when another tempting work appears on the shelf. He tosses it haphazardly into the pile, ignoring the neat rows he’s made. “I can’t keep up with them!”

“Darling—” I laugh, pulling at his wrist. He moves away from his to-read stacks to face me. “There’s no rush, you’ll get through them.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You’re telling me you’ve managed to keep up and read all these books in here?”

I scoff at him, “Of course not. And I hate all the philosophy. But if you weren’t so determined to one-up the Muse of Literature, maybe she wouldn’t be manic about turning them out so quickly.”

“She’s mocking me.”

“She’s the master of storytelling, the ultimate wordsmith. She mocks _everyone_ —and here you are, bloody _challenging_ her.”

He sneers vaguely in the direction of the shelves and says loudly, “Well, I’d hardly call that last piece she brought a _challenge_.” The pages of the open books around the room rustle in anger.

“I think you need a break. Come on, sweetheart. Leave the Muse alone,” I say and push him out the library.

“You’re not allowed to mock me either.”

“I’m not mocking you, Baz.”

“You called me ‘sweetheart.’ You only do that when you’re attempting to mock me.”

“No I don’t.” Yes I do.

The Muse does start sending fewer books to the shelves for Baz to finally keep up with, but they’re all the same theme—the folly of man being arrogance and pride.

Baz bristles once I point this out, embarrassed he hadn’t realized the jab sooner, and takes a break from reading to study the pianoforte instead.

“The study of music is far superior to second-rate literature, if you ask me.” An open book slams itself shut next to us with so much force it falls off the desk. I guess it’s safe to say he’s burned that bridge.

But he does study the pianoforte and gets so good that he shows off a little when we actually do hold the feast. He absolutely floors the gods though when he manages to make the Muse of Music weep from his violin playing. She vows to bring him new compositions and to help him on his own pieces.

I’ve never been so proud to be his.

* * *

 

**Baz**

Ebb cries during her visits. She always blubbers something about actually getting to see us together in person and how we get on so well.

She manages to escape from her mother’s grasp to steal another moment up at the Sun Palace, but today is a sad day for Simon because I’m leaving to spend a couple nights at the estate with Fiona and Nico.

But I’ve worked it out that Penny come and keep him company while I’m away, so he won’t be lonely.

I haven’t told Fiona about the trip in our letters, but I did make sure she didn’t have any plans to be away or to entertain any guests in a secret letter meant for Nico’s eyes only. He’s always good to get a one-up on Fiona with me every now and then. That’s what makes us ‘her terrors.’

“I’ll be outside most of the time,” I say to Simon before we leave. “It’s too cold down there for me not to be near you in some way.”

He nods. “Seriously, Baz, enjoy yourself. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine. Are you sure you don’t want to spend more than two nights? This will be the last time you get a round-trip before Ebb comes back up in the Spring.”

I assure him by wrapping my arms around him and saying into his ear, “I’ll be back in two days.” I give him a quick peck. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“He won’t,” Penny says behind us.

“I’m not a child,” Simon grumbles.

“You and Baz had a contest to see how much you could eat before either of you exploded.”

He grumbles again petulantly, “But did we? No.”

“Who gave up first?” Ebb asks Penny.

“Both of them, at the same time when they realized they’re actual bottomless pits.”

“I told ‘em before that the rules of the living don’t apply to gods and the undead.” Ebb tsks. “If ya got everything ya need Baz, we can go.”

I’m bringing my new violin to show Fiona and Nico, but really, I’m not taking anything with me. Fiona still has the servants tend to my room and nothing’s been removed because she’s sentimental.

Nico wrote that. She’d never admit it, but now she’ll have to, and I’ll tease her mercilessly for it.

I press a kiss to Simon’s temple, release him with one last squeeze, and step towards Ebb. “Alright, I’m ready. You’re not going to push me again, are you?” I ask.

Ebb laughs and places a hand on my shoulder and before I can wave one last time to Simon and Penny, we’re gone and all I can feel is Ebb’s hand and see something small and delicate fluttering around us like a blizzard. Where Agatha’s magic felt like phasing, as seamless as ghosts walking through walls, Ebb’s feels like wind.

My feet hit solid ground and I realize we’re already here. I look up to the sky and hold my hand over my eyes, trying to stare back up at my new home. I give an exaggerated wave at the sun, and Simon and Penny who I know are watching.

“Thank you, Ebb,” I say, holding myself because it’s ridiculously frigid here even in Summer for me.

“Anytime. If ya want to stay longer, just go tell the roses,” she says and disappears in a flurry of what I now see are cherry blossoms.

I walk up to the house and peek my head through the doors we always keep open to the garden. Nico is sitting faced towards them and spots me immediately like we planned. He jumps to his feet and circles around Fiona who’s got a tea cup and an open decanter full of her favorite brandy right next to it. It’s only noon. I roll my eyes at her predictability.

“Nick,” she questions, his hands now covering her eyes while I rush over and take his place on the other side of the table. “What the hell are you doing?”

I’m sitting with a huge grin, but quickly pack it down into a bored expression, lift Nico’s paper like I’m just browsing the latest town news, and nod at him to let go. He does and I can see her whole frame go rigid from the corner of my eye. I don’t even look away from the text when she drops the tea cup with a shattering crack.

“Ah, it says Walter Harrington’s gotten married. Good for him.” I hum, licking my finger and flipping to a new page.

“You son of a bastard.” She shoots up, knocking the table and dropping the vase. I let her come to me and just sit there pleased as punch while she grips my shoulders, practically shouting at me why I’m here and how I’m here.

“I can’t tell if she wants to throttle you or hug you,” Nico laughs.

“Both,” I say as she gives my cheek a what would be painful tug before the sting of my icy skin becomes too much for her.

“How are you so calm?!” she yells at Nico.

“Been planning this for a couple weeks, haven’t we?” he replies.

“You told Nickels and not me?!” She can’t stop grinning though. I can see she’s trying her damnedest not to, but she can’t hide her excitement.

“I wanted to surprise you.” I wish I could hold her, but we settle for our hands clasped onto each other’s sleeves.

“Well, hope you’re satisfied. You got me, you terror,” she says, still trying to bite back her grin. “Baz,” she says breathlessly like she can’t believe I’m real, “you’re here… But what about Simon?”

“I’m down for a few days then Ebb has to bring me back up before she goes back down to the Underworld for the rest of the year.”

“Ebb…” she says wide-eyed. “As in…”

“As in one of the _Queens_ of the Underworld?” Nico asks like he can’t believe it.

“Yes. She’s a big fan of Simon and me.”

“Look at you. Mingling with the gods,” she teases.

“And the Muses. All of them—except for the Muse of Literature—adore me. Always trying to get a rise out of Simon by flirting relentlessly with his fiancé.”

“Wait—fiancé! You couldn’t write that in, too?”

“I wanted to tell you in person,” I say before a frown takes over. “I’m sorry it can’t be down here on Earth, but Simon can’t leave. Even for that.”

“Well, when is it then?” she asks excitedly.

“Simon said the earliest we could do was Spring. So, I picked Ostara. He wanted me to get settled in with the palace and the gods, and Ebb doesn’t return to the surface until Spring, too.”

“Really?” she deadpans and cocks an eyebrow at me.

“What? What’s wrong with Ostara?” I’m offended by her tone.

“You literally picked the equinox—the very first day of Spring to have your Spring wedding.”

I look her straight in the eye, challenging her to tease me.

She does. “Wow, Basil. Just a little eager there, huh?”

“Well,” I snark, “we can’t all wait around to have our _marriage_ ceremony on the day the _spirits_ cross the veil—”

“Samhain is a distinguished day—!” she argues.

“It’s literally the day we celebrate the dead! You married on Death Day!”

“Okay, you two. Fi, let Baz get married in peace.”

“All I’m saying—”

Nico pats her shoulder and whispers, “You know who else used to begin their sentences that way?”

She stops for a moment and then realization hits and she hisses, “Are you _insinuating_ that I’m my mother?”

“Oh, yes,” I say smugly. “I can see it. She’s Grandma Pitch right now, all the way down to the self-righteous scrutiny.”

“You two are incorrigible,” she mumbles as Nico and I snicker.

We spend hours just talking about what it’s like at my new home—at my _palace._ She orders a special dinner and has the servants pile on so many blankets onto my mattress that it’s a struggle for them to turn down the bed.

I sleep with a candle lit because I’m so used to closing my eyes with Simon’s glow next to my face. The single flame pales in comparison. But, it feels nice to be here in my old room again. I miss him though, and I’m still freezing so it makes it hard to sleep. Eventually, I give up on it completely because lying down and focusing on nothing but how cold I am is torturous. I go down to the garden instead to distract myself.

The hedges and roses are still taken care of thanks to Nico and Fiona, and my mother’s memorial piece in the ground is swept and neat. I lay down on it and look up at the sky.

Thousands of stars up there except for my favorite one. I trace constellations I know by heart and make up new ones that remind me of my new life with Simon until they all fade with dawn and Simon’s light floods the center of the maze. I know he’s watching and I just lie back basking in his shine, finally warming to only a slight shiver when Nico calls out of the house looking for me.

We’re going to town today, so I can pick a ring out for Simon. See, I’ve had this planned since Ebb offered to take me down to Earth. I make sure it’s in my pocket—the little knotted string I tied around a sleeping Simon’s ring finger then slipped off before he awoke because I’m pathetic and a romantic now. He makes me disgustingly romantic.

Plus, he keeps making all these glorious things for me from his magic. I just want to give him at least one thing from me after all he’s done. I want him to look down at his hand and have it put a stop to the guilt I know he harbors about me choosing to live at the Palace instead of Earth.

I don’t know how many times I’ve already told him that I’m not human, that Earth isn’t my home anymore, but hopefully this and our wedding will help lay some of it to rest.

Nico and I take our horses to town; Ursa loses it when she senses me come around her stall and is dying to run at her full capacity again. We end up waiting off the side of the road outside of town for Nico to catch up to us.

* * *

 

“This is the one.”

I’m sure of it.

The band matches the size of the loop and is elaborate enough just to remind me of Earth with the silver rough and weaving like tree roots. It’s perfectly imperfect and I can envision it on Simon’s hand already. I think he’ll appreciate the stark silver against his tawny skin. He was right, everything up at the Palace is either white marble or warm-toned and gold. He needs contrast and you can’t get any more of a difference than cold and gray, so it’s kind of like me in a way.

“You sure, Baz? We can look some more before you settle on one.”

“Yes, I’m sure. This is it.” The woman of the shop smiles at me before she begins to package it; very small and plain—concealed and simple so Simon shouldn’t notice anything.

I’ve decided to bring a few other things up to the palace with me as a distraction, so Nico and I duck in and out of stores looking for interesting trinkets for Simon. I think I’ll make a habit of this, bring him small pieces of the human world since he can’t visit anymore. Perhaps I can persuade Fiona and Nico to go to the seaside next time I visit, that way I can bring him back some more shells other than the few special ones I have saved back in my old room.

I’m telling Nico all this when we get stopped on the street by none other than gossipy, overdramatic Mrs. Talbot herself. I’m immediately aware that whatever she sees and hears will be common knowledge amongst the community by the end of tomorrow.

“Basilton!” she exclaims. Nico and I are silently praying she doesn’t come too close and feel the chill of death running off me. “Where have you been hiding? Everyone’s been inquiring after you, but your aunt won’t say a word about it!”

“Well—”

“And you’re not in school anymore?”

“Not exactly—”

“And your complexion, are you not getting much sun wherever you’ve left to?”

I want to laugh at that. Nico jumps to my aid. Apparently he and Fiona have already been working on it.

“Basil’s been in the North with his fiancé,” Nico says.

“The North? Fiancé?! Oh congratulations, Basilton! How happy for you. Is that why you’ve discontinued your studies?” she asks.

“His fiancé comes from the highest aristocracy. They have an overabundance of private tutors, the most qualified scholars in so many subjects, Mrs. Talbot.”

Tutors. Well, I suppose. Do the Muses count?

She gasps. “Private tutors, oh my. How extraordinary the family’s connections must be.”

“You would not _believe_ their influence. And, between us—” he very well knows nothing stays between Mrs. Talbot and the confider, “—the estate and surrounding properties even puts the _Harrington’s_ to complete shame, if you can believe it,” he finishes with a scandalous laugh.

It does put it to shame. I live in a bloody palace built by the gods themselves.

“My! I must say, Basilton, it does sound as if you’re marrying royalty!”

“I’m marrying quite well,” I brag in a humble voice. I’m just as terrible as Nico and Fiona. Pitches have a reputation to uphold.

“Oh, I hope he adores you! You’re such a fine young man, a gentleman in every way. I daresay my nephew will be devastated with the news of your engagement.” She laughs.

Nymphs. Spoiled rich high society gits.

Let them all cry rivers.

“Thank you, ma’am,” I answer instead.

“Well, we really must be going. Basil will be off again tomorrow. Good to see you, Mrs. Talbot.”

“Yes, yes, of course! I must go tell Lady Possibelf the news. Married! And in the North!” she laughs and ambles away.

“That was less dismal than I was expecting,” I say to Nico as we mount our horses.

“It’s not a hard excuse. We married you off and shipped you away. Problem solved,” he smiles.

“Did you really have to say all that about the Harrington’s? Name dropping was surest way of guaranteeing gossip and now they’re going to think I’ve really married royalty.”

“If Fi and I have anything to say about it, the whole town is going to think you have your own jewel encrusted throne.”

“Only a Pitch,” I joke.

“Yes, indeed. Only a Pitch.”

 

**Ebb**

When Baz tells the roses that he’s ready to go home, I appear in his garden.

“What else are ya bringing back up?” I ask. I told him to bring as much as he wanted, that with my magic then Simon’s, it’d be no different than when Penny brings books and things from her Micah.

“Just some things of my parents. Portraits. Sheet music. Seashells for Simon, gifts for Simon…” He smirks at me. “A ring for Simon.”

That does it. I start to cry and he looks concerned for a minute, unsure what to do. I wave him off and say, “I’m fine, I’m fine. I tell ya, you boys are going to be so happy come Spring.” I blow into a handkerchief that appears in my hand.

“We already are,” Baz says.

“Come on then.” I tug his arm. “let’s get you back home.”

“Home sounds good. I haven’t stopped shivering since I got down here.”

The blossoms and petals start to swirl around our feet then flood around us as he waves goodbye to his family; his family that he’s left for his love. I cry a little more.

When we get to the palace, he doesn’t even have time to put his bag and violin case down before Simon jumps at him, flinging his arms around Baz’s neck and grinning blindingly.

“Did you have fun?” Simon asks, still strangling the poor boy.

“Yes,” he says then laughs. “Especially when Nico and Fiona started spreading rumors about me marrying royalty in the North where I don’t get much sun anymore.”

Penny laughs maniacally, and I decide to conjure up some ivy that twists around the banisters of the balcony and blooms bright with pink flowers. I’m adding as much life and growth into this place as possible before I go back to my home and love, too. Just a little bit more every time I come. If I can get even my wife to perk up with some new flowers and plants, I know it’ll help quell Simon’s own longing for the surface.

But I wonder if all his watching was just searching for something special to hold on to, something to call his own. He’s found it in Baz, I think.

I leave them to return to my mum. I have a few more days before I go back to be with my wife. I understand Baz more than he thinks because I have family on the surface, too, but the love of my existence is locked away somewhere else. The Underworld is just a place, my real home is my wife.

And Baz’s is Simon.

* * *

  ** _T_ _wo Seasons Later_ **

 

**Ebb**

“Must you go?” my wife grumbles into my neck. We haven’t left our bedroom for a week in anticipation of my leave from the Underworld.

“We’ve contracted out to the other gods too long already. Anubis is probably backlogged. Come on, lazy bum. Go judge some souls. Besides, aren’t you tired of me yet?”

“I never tire of you.” She sighs, pressing a light kiss into my shoulder and looks back up at me with her black eyes, dark as the onyx that pokes out with the rest of the crystals from the castle’s walls. “I miss you when you’re gone.”

“I know, love,” I say and press a kiss to her nose. “But it’s the twentieth of March. Which means Spring is here and I have a wedding to get to.”

“Or you could just stay. Tell your mum she can take her ridiculous timetable and shove it up her—”

I swat at her nose. “Aren’t you the one who was trying to tell Baz that ‘order must be maintained’? If I don’t go spend some time with her, you know she’ll just get angry and change the seasons all on her own. Then where will the humans be?”

She yawns and stretches her arms over me, wrapping around my body to keep me trapped in our bed. “It’s not so bad living in darkness once you get used to it.”

“I imagine Simon says the same thing about living in the light,” I say pensively. “Baz and I have a lot in common.”

“Tyrannus is not a god. You have nothing in common.”

She’s being difficult because she’s trying to hide how upset she is about me leaving. I run my hand through her long dark hair and smooth it back from her face. It’s soft, like she is deep down. She’s not all hard edges in our bedroom because she doesn’t have to be.

I tell her, “Baz loves Simon so much he sacrificed the surface for him. I love you more than anything, that’s why I ate the pomegranate. So, my mother could never keep us apart.” My wife hums, her eyes fluttering closed at my hand running over her cheek. “And it’s their wedding day, so I’m going to be there to represent us.”

She sighs dramatically and finally sits up. I sit up with her, the sheets pooling around our waists. She clasps her hands together, a deep purple glow emitting from them, and pulls them apart. The light manifests into an ornate mirror, but the whole thing is a solid, polished black, right down to the actual mirror. It’s so smooth that it reflects the light from the gems in the ceiling.

“The whole thing’s made of obsidian. Give it to Tyrannus. Tell him I said congratulations.”

“Is this like yours?”

“Yes. It’ll let him see onto the surface, too, like Simon’s natural vision. Even better though because it doesn’t matter if it’s within the sun’s reach or not.”

“Can you hear through it like yours?”

“Yes.”

My wife’s mirror takes up most of the wall in her study. It’s how she spotted me for the first time, when I tore apart that man trying to attack a nature spirit for her magic. Said she was absolutely smitten with me ever since, and when the man’s life faded and he was ferried here, she enjoyed mocking him in my honor and sending the one called ‘Davy’ to the first door to the realms of the dead. The first is a reserved punishment for the abusive, sadistic, and dishonorable.

We leave our bedroom after she seduces me into staying for another hour. Her head is held high now, posture straight as can be, but she relaxes a bit when she hugs me by Cerberus’s spot underneath the tree I grew. I had to say goodbye to my good boys before I left, too.

“I’m so late,” I whisper unto her lips. “I’ll see you in no time.”

“I’ll watch for you,” she says. And I smile back, knowing that’s what Simon always said to Baz before he left back for the sun and how happy today is going to be for them.

I make my way up to the surface and I’m greeted with daylight for the first time in months. I hold the mirror to my chest and flurry to the Sun Palace. It’s crowded to the brim with low and high level gods, creatures, spirits, and muses all alike when I arrive.

The Queen of the Gods is speaking. She _is_ the Goddess of Matrimony—and Contracts and Unions which I suppose goes hand in hand sometimes.

“I now announce thi—”

“Ebb!” Simon shouts. He and Baz are together at the end of the banquet hall, the Queen of the Gods standing behind them.

“Sorry!” I flurry in a breeze of cherry blossoms again and appear across the room in front of the boys. I give ‘em a kiss each on the cheek and look up at their wedding arch. It’s gold and silver—

But so plain.

“Let’s add a little color,” I say and touch my hand down on the arch. Vines spring from my palm and wind around it. Flowers of all colors and petal shapes bloom from behind bright luminescent leaves, and ivy wiggles its way down the other side. I also send petals showering over them and the entire hall like a gentle rain.

They break out in grins, looking up at the rainbow of petals falling. It’s colorful, it’s Earth, and it’s alive just like them.

I move over into a spot next to Penny. Petals start piling in Simon’s curls while others cling to the tails of his jacket and collect in the top of his tall boots. He’s wearing Earth clothes but in his colors. Cream, gold, and white to mirror Baz’s dark gray, black, and green.

“If there are no further interruptions,” the Queen continues with a pointed stare at me, “I announce this union as eternal and binding before all of the Hierarchy and its descendants.”

 _Descendants_. Well that’s new. A new way for ‘creations of the gods.’ Baz and Simon’s love must’ve softened her up a bit to make that kind of change.

Simon lifts Baz’s hands and pulls him forward, capturing his lips in their first married kiss. Baz throws his arms around Simon enthusiastically and deepens it when a trill of a joyful tune erupts from behind the crowd. Some of the gods and descendants yell and holler, and there’s a crack of thunder in the hall amidst the cheering, the Storm Goddess no doubt. Others clap with their contained excitement. Penny’s beaming and holding onto my arm like she can’t believe it.

And, Baz is gazing into Simon’s eyes the same way I gazed into my wife’s on our own wedding day.

Like there’s nowhere else we’d rather be than with our spouses.

Baz and Simon are together, they’re eternal, they’re partners and equals.

They’re a match.

 

**Penny**

The celebration kicks off and Simon becomes a giggling mess once the God of Wine—I mean, ahem, _Grape Harvest_ —and the Muse of Dance get to him. The God of Love—and _shameless_ flirting—is already batting his beautiful, long, curling eyelashes at Baz when Simon promptly whisks him away and into a dance.

“On our wedding day, honestly!” I hear Simon say in outrage as Baz swings him around to my side of the hall gracefully. (They’ve been practicing all Autumn and Winter and it shows because Simon only steps on Baz’s toes a couple times in their waltzing toward me.)

“Everyone wants me. There’s nothing that can be done,” Baz smirks.

“Let’s see how pretty he is when I—” Baz kisses him with a pleased smile and glides Simon back across the glossed tiles and out of my earshot.

Ebb and I dance, too. She lets me lead even though I’m shorter. We’re the only ones in the hall not drinking. Even Baz had to put a stop to Simon’s cup saying, “For what I plan on doing to you, I want you sober.”

I don’t think I was meant to hear that.

And, when Simon comes back to his senses a little, I catch the two of them stealing moments behind pillars, in shadowy doorways, seeming more and more desperate as the reception goes on. They’re particularly engrossed in one another behind the hanging ivy of the wedding arch when I finally signal to Ebb to shut it down.

We tell people to move the party to Agatha’s—since she left so early. As soon as the ceremony ended, actually. Plus, we knew it’d actually ruffle her up for once having her forest invaded by a bunch of drunk, partying deities.

We’re about to take our own leave from the balcony when Simon and Baz run up to us and hug us both.

“Thank you for coming, Ebb,” Baz says, and Ebb gives him a hug with her goddess strength, lifting him off his toes with no effort.

“Of course! And, I have something for you. A gift from the wife,” she says and presents a mirror entirely carved out of something shiny and black.

He takes it and inspects it. None of us know what it’s for, so we all look at her questioningly.

“Focus on anything you want from Earth,” she says.

So, Baz closes his eyes and suddenly the black mirror shines like a portal with the light of day. It’s his aunt and uncle in the garden, pruning the bushes. Suddenly we hear from it—

 _“It’s their wedding today, you know,”_ the voice says. It must be Baz’s uncle; the mirror shows he’s speaking.

 _“Of course, I know. He’s my nephew. I just wish I knew if it went off without a hitch,”_ Fiona’s voice says from the mirror.

Just then, a purple petal falls onto Fiona’s head. We see Nico laugh and knock it off. But then another one, and another, and another fall until a shower of them cover the whole garden. Like Ebb had done for the ceremony.

We look up and see Ebb leaning over the side of the railing with her hand outstretched and glowing.

 _“Suppose that’s our sign,”_ Nico says as they shield their eyes to look up at the sun.

In the mirror, we see Fiona wave. _“I hope he can see that from up there. Otherwise I’m just a crazy old bat waving at the sky.”_

Baz looks back up at Ebb with an unreadable expression on his face.

“I know only a god or descendant can see everyone on Earth from up here, so now you can watch when Simon does, too,” she says. “I bet even Simon’ll be scramblin’ for a turn since you can hear ‘em.”

Baz steps towards her with the mirror still in his hand and wraps his arms around her without a word.

“It’ll even work in the Underworld, too, y’know,” she smiles.

His head shoots back up as quick as a whip. “My mother and father?” he asks in a small voice.

“Go on.” She nods her head at the mirror. “Take a peek.”

The mirror in Baz’s hand darkens to a softer glow, the glow of the Underworld. It shows a tall, regal looking woman with her hair high in a bun fixing the tie of a man with the same exaggerated widow’s peak as Baz’s.

I’m about to ask if that’s them when the woman rolls her eyes and says, _“Honestly, Malcolm. You would think that you’d know how to do up your own tie the proper way by now.”_

That’s his mum alright.

Simon’s by his side in an instant when a tear falls down Baz’s cheek. He holds the mirror in his hands the same way as he holds Simon’s face, like it’s the most precious thing in the world.

“I think it’s time we retire to the surface, Penny,” Ebb says and gestures for me to come.

I stop by Simon and give him a peck on the forehead before I’m up in moondust and shooting down towards Earth.

 

**Simon**

I’m sobered up now. Well, okay, only slightly tipsy. But I’m pretty sure that we’re not going to get up to anything on our wedding night when Baz starts crying.

We’ve been sitting side by side on the bed just watching his parents. He surprises me though when he gets up and puts the mirror down on the bedside table then gracefully straddles my hips. He holds my face in his hands and presses his lips to mine, strong and unrelenting.

I can taste the salt from his tear tracks and reach up to wind my hand in his soft, inky hair—dark like his mother’s, thick like his father’s.

He pulls back and smiles at me lovingly through watery eyes.

“Thank you,” he says sweetly. Then kisses me again and repeats, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” over and over. There’s a laugh in his voice now and his eyes are smiling.

“I didn’t do it,” I say. “Ebb’s partner did.”

“No, you did. You did all of this, Simon,” he says to me. “I was hardly alive when you met me, and you brought me back, and you made me fall in love, and you brought me here to a palace and life of art and music and dancing and—and—”

He usually doesn’t stammer on his words like this, so free and child-like. It makes me grin.

“You gave me back my parents. I wouldn’t have any of this if it weren’t for you,” he laughs and presses his forehead against mine. “I love you, Simon. Thank you for saving me.”

“Thank you for saving me, too.” I giggle a little because it’s been infectious lately and we just can’t contain it anymore, especially not today. Not on our wedding day; celebrated and cheered for by so many important people who promised to visit more, who promised to come for more feasts, and celebrations, and the Solstice, and to hear Baz play.

We stay tangled in our sheets for days because we can; evening each other out—his bare skin cooling me down and mine warming him up. Even Pen doesn’t crash the Palace for a couple weeks. And our new life is perfect.

* * *

Baz and I are husbands. I found I like saying it just as much as ‘boyfriend’ actually because when I do say it, Baz gets this dreamy look on his face and I like him light and happy like that.

We’re partners in our own domain, too; just like Ebb and Hades. He keeps this Sun going as much as I do because without him, I’m nothing but an expiring star.

So, days pass.

Weeks pass.

Months.

And then eventually years, too.

Baz never stops looking at me the way he did when I professed my eternal love for him in front of a room of gods.

Fiona and Nico age and never have that ‘runt’ Baz told them to have. Soon Fiona has more white streaks in her hair than just the one.

But the most surprising development was Penny. She looks like she’s growing older. Ebb and her say it’s natural; that she’s still eternal like Baz and me, but she’s mirroring Micah down on Earth, like she’s growing with him. He married her in the daylight so I could watch from the palace. We still used Baz’s mirror to hear their vows.

But sadly, time ages the Earth. Flowers bloom and die, and so do people.

Fiona’s first to go.

We see her being ferried into Ebb’s throne room where Ebb greets her like an old friend and walks her to Baz’s mother herself to be reunited at last. As soon as the sisters embrace, years shed off Fiona until she looks just as she had the first time she stared me down in the parlour the day after I left the Solstice, when Baz introduced me as his Sun-Boyfriend.

She tells Baz’s mother all about us. How Baz found me, how I threw the world into chaos for him, how I sacrificed my own happiness so that Baz could live, and how Baz sacrificed everything so that I could live, too.

Fiona tells Natasha and Malcolm about the mirror and they talk to Baz through it once in a while. It’s one-sided, they can’t hear him back, but Baz can’t ever shake his grin when they do speak to him. He asks Ebb hesitantly one day to bring them a letter, if the rules allow it. She says she can do whatever she wishes because she’s a queen, so she does.

Ebb’s my family. She’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to it besides Pen. And Baz is my husband which means he’s Ebb’s family, too. So, she treats Baz’s family like her own. This means they get special treatment in the Underworld. Hades turns a blind eye to it because it makes Ebb happy.

Nico’s alone on the surface besides Baz’s visits in the Spring and Summer. We expect him to die from a broken heart.

The concept seemed so expected by this point. But he surprises us all by helping Baz bestow the Pitch-less estate to Micah’s family. He surprises us even more when he takes old Ursa with Agatha’s renewed blessings across the lands with just a couple saddle bags.

We see the day Ursa finally passes away in Agatha’s loving embrace.

Nico traverses continents. He scales mountains and dines with strangers of foreign lands, and every night he writes in a journal about his adventures that day. It’s a journal that Penny takes from him the night he finally passes to rejoin his wife and her family in the Meadows.

It’s also the most precious book we have safely stored in the library. The Muse of Literature vowed to protect it, too. She helped Nico with the words, after all, even if he didn’t know it. Pitches always get special treatment now.

And, we watch when Micah brings his sisters and mother to the Pitch Estate and announces that it, the properties, and the business all belong to them, too.

His mother breaks down in tears and Micah scoops her into his arms until she all but pushes him out of the way to throw herself at Penny, kissing her cheeks and thanking her daughter-in-law for bringing them all such blessings.

Micah’s mother dies surrounded by family in a house she never dreamed of ever stepping foot into.

Having taken over the businesses, Micah becomes a well-respected man in town. There are still people who sneer at the ‘new money’ family, but his family’s earnestness and charm quickly win over the immediate community. The Pitch halls are filled with Micah and Penny’s nieces and nephews.

Penny isn’t on Earth when Micah dies...

He sacrifices himself to save his nephew when their carriage is overrun by bandits. But, Pen is there when he travels the Underworld. Baz and I watch them walk hand in hand to the Queens’ throne room until she can’t go any further than the three doors where all the souls reside.

 _“I’m sorry, Penny. But only my partner or I can venture that deep into the Underworld,”_ we hear Ebb say from the mirror.

Pen cries, but Ebb puts it to a stop when the farthest door to the right opens instead of the middle to the Meadows.

 _“That door only opens for the truly brave and selfless; those who die in sacrifice or live to the highest honor. He will be reborn to the surface soon enough,”_ Hades announces.

Penny and Micah say goodbye, both holding on as long as they can. Ebb cries, as usual, but even Baz looks torn up at the two being separated for who knows how long.

Pen runs to us after Micah walks through that door. She looks as young as the day she decided to break all the rules and bring me down to Earth. We both hold her together when she wants nothing more than to fall apart.

She doesn’t start to expire like I did though.

She spends her time on Earth with Micah’s family, her family. She guides the young ones until they become adults and make families of their own. And so on until every bedtime story is about the secret knowledge of their eternal Aunt Pen being the woman in the Moon, and how one day, she will be reunited with her husband once again.

She watches for Micah to reappear, every day she isn’t on Earth with her family. And one day she spots him—as a young man again, the spitting image of Micah, fiddling with a telescope on a rooftop farther down south and trying to look at the one thing that always captivated him—Pen in the night sky.

We watch him when he first meets her in this lifetime. He thinks he’s finally gone moonstruck, but after a single night, he’s absolutely in love with her all over again. Pen, with her glowing skin and sparkling blue hair. As time goes on, he begins to remember his old life like a dream, how his wife and the love of that life was the Moon. Micah makes sure to live honorably every day of his life so that when the time comes, and he’s ferried to Ebb and her partner for judgement, he can be reborn and reunited with Pen.

He’s reborn much faster the next time because his soul knows what to do.

* * *

 Baz and I spend the beginning of our forever watching everyone we love from his mirror and from our balcony.

But that’s only when we’re not laughing and pranking and painting terrible portraits of each other, trying to see who can make the most grotesque one and disgust the Muse of Art the most. I snicker because even his absolute worst is better than mine, so I usually win. Our competition always ends with paint smeared everywhere from where we dodge and splatter it. Pen usually finds us drenched in bright colors. (Ebb says we have to be more careful around the plants though.)

Baz plays for me every day, too. Always new evolving compositions from the Muse of Music who has changed and experimented over the decades so many times. She’s helped him compose his own pieces, ones that keep up with the times, ones that pull from the classics. Some of Baz’s even spur on new trends in music around the world, too.

They’re brilliant and wonderful, and we always tell the Muse to make sure she grants the sheets to talented musicians struggling to be discovered. Baz is proud every time we watch their careers take off through the mirror by playing the mysterious pieces they’ve found shoved in unlikely places—like pressed inside used books, nameless and dusty in old family trunks. Sometimes blown under their feet in empty parks. Sometimes she just refers to Baz’s sheets and whispers the melodies in musicians’ ears when they sleep.

One musician sat on the dream melody for a whole year, thinking he had to have copied it from somewhere else. But he never heard it anywhere else and finally decided that it was time to release it to the public. It was a huge success—and _Baz_ did that.

And the Muses of Music and Dance come together and bicker about how is best for us to dance to the new melodies. I still trip up and step on Baz’s toes now and then, but we have so many occasions here at the palace that I’ve gotten good enough to keep up with him. I still cook better than him though, and Penny brings me all sorts of books for me to learn off of.

Our favorite is still stargazing. Baz teaches me all the constellations he studied, then some from other parts of the world and other cultures with their own histories in the stars. We make up our own, too, and he draws out our new star maps and stores them in a large portfolio that we take out and show our guests.

And when he wants an excuse to touch me, he traces the freckles and moles across my skin, making up ones on me.

“This one’s my favorite.” He points to a mole on my neck.

“And which of your constellations is that one in?”

He shrugs and pecks his lips against it. “None. I just like to kiss this one.”

He’s taken up a new project recently, one that he’s been keeping secret from me no matter how much I try to tease and seduce it out of him.

I’m in the shade that the palace casts down on our balcony. That’s when he finally decides to reveal it.

“Ready?” Baz says, standing over me with his hands tucked behind his back.

I roll my eyes at him because he’s been teasing about it all day.

“I’m just not sure you’re ready for it yet.”

“Stop being a bloody tease.”

“Guess.”

“I’ve been guessing for months! I’m not going to figure it out now.”

“Spoilsport. But firstly, Happy Birthday.”

“Baz, not this again.” He’s been on about me having a birthday of my own lately, ever since he started this secret project.

He repeats, as he has for the last six months, “The gods said you were born into existence the month of the Summer Solstice. That means it was sometime in June—and what better day than the day all of Earth celebrates your light?”

He pulls a book bound with an intricate weave of golden thread from behind his back.

“I wrote about that in here, too.”

“A book?” I ask then exclaim, “Of course! That’s why you’ve had ink all over your hands. I thought you were drawing! Have you been writing a book this whole time? How was I supposed to guess that?! The Muse of Literature and you aren’t exactly friends.”

“This, my love, is not just any book—” He scoots next to me and turns it to the first page:

_For my favorite Star_

 

**Baz**

I flip to the next page and it’s a simple illustration I did of a shooting star falling into a garden, captioned, ‘Chapter One: The Lost Sun’.

“What is this, Baz?”

“The Muse of Literature and I have put aside our differences.”

“You mean your rivalry.” He smirks.

“She’s been helping me to write about us. About how we met.” I flip forward. “See? This passage is about when I saw you fall from the sky out my window.” I flip again. “And the blockade on the bridge, when the bear almost got me and Ursa.”

I open to an illustration of a flock of forest spirits playing music.

“This is when I taught you to dance on our third date, and when you introduced me to all the forest sprites and tree spirits.”

“I stepped on your toes,” he says and wrinkles his nose.

“And, I included that in the passage, too.” I smile. “There’s more. Even about what it was like when you left.”

“…I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t write this to guilt you.” I say softly. “I wrote it because I want you to _finally_ fully understand, from my perspective, how going through Ebb and Hades’ tests were more than me just trying to save you; I was trying to save me, too.”

Simon lifts and kisses my left hand, the wedding band he made me radiant, swirling golden stardust inside it, and warming my cold skin. “So,” he says, “are you going to get Pen’s great-great… um, wait, how many ‘greats’ is it now?”

I sigh dramatically and roll my eyes. “Does it matter?”

“Are you going to get her niece to print it at her publishing house?”

“Only when you finish it. And, only if you want me to.”

Simon shakes his head and says, “Of course you can bloody write as well. You’re perfect. What _can’t_ you do?”

“I’ve been reading the finest literature the Muse has to offer for at least a few centuries now. I think I can string a word or two together.”

I open it to an illustration in the back that shrouds our faces but shows us dancing in our suits on our wedding day. I give it to him and he just stares down at it—the blossoms falling, the crowds of gods. Simon closes the book and clutches it to his chest, smiling, “Thank you, darling.”

“I just want you to know everything, and I want the world to look at the sun and know that it’s a real person up here who really sacrificed everything to keep everyone alive.”

“I stayed here to keep _you_ alive.”

“But you also stay because you’re good, and you care about the world, too.”

“No one will believe a story like ours,” he says.

“We’ll see.”

And we do.

Over the years, it ages into a classic piece, and the mysterious author, ‘T.B. Grimm-Pitch’s declared birthday of the Sun—the Summer Solstice—becomes an even bigger occasion. People actually start looking up at Simon and wave, greeting his new mornings as they stretch and get ready for their days—

Just in case the Simon from the fairytale is really watching down on them.

We watch back from my mirror every Solstice as people reread passages to everyone around the festivals. About how I fell in love and was introduced to a world of extraordinary magic. About my adventure into the Underworld and my speech to the Queens.

People fear the Underworld less because of it, too, and Ebb tells us all the time how souls ask her and her wife if the fairytale is true; if the author really did navigate the Underworld for the Sun.

(Let’s just say that us Pitches—Fiona in particular—have become somewhat of celebrities down there.)

But, the most important thing, the thing I set out to do, is that Simon understands how much I was also fading away, before him, without him. How important he is to my existence.

He told me once that it was drilled into him how much people _needed_ him, and how he always craved to be wanted like Pen and the Moon in the night sky are.

But, _I_ want him, and I love him. And with this story, now the people of Earth do, too. Because there’s no one as selfless and vibrant as my Star. I get to live forever in absolute, heavenly, divine bliss with him. So this book—this attempt to get the world to see him as I do—as Penny does, and Ebb, and Agatha; my family; the gods; the descendants—

It was the least I could do after everything he’s given me.

“Read it to me again, Baz,” he mumbles comfortably before settling into my side on our bed.

“Which part?”

“The part where you gush about how handsome and breathtaking I am.”

I roll my eyes because he _knows_ I filled it indulgently with flowery descriptions of just how breathtaking I found him—still find him—whenever I got the chance, and he teases me nonstop even to this day.

I sigh and drawl, “ _Which_ part, Simon.”

“When we met.” It’s his favorite.

I open to the middle of the first chapter and begin to read the familiar words:

 

_“’He was so beautiful it was terrifying. But I couldn’t bring myself to look away because sparing a glance at anything but his absolute, otherworldly radiance would’ve been the biggest waste. Looking anywhere else other than him and the stardust spilling from his body as he ran to me, or even away from his smile, the purest, most hopeful grin I’d ever seen, would’ve been the biggest crime I’d ever committed in my life._

_‘And, when he approached me with his glowing hand out to shake mine, claiming that’s what he’d seen “humans” do, I wondered—Would his touch kill a simple human like me? And whether I even cared. Because dying while finally being able to touch the stars wouldn’t be such a bad way to go…’”_

 

Simon likes this part because he remembers it differently. The first time he’d read the book, he’d found himself not even ten pages into it and reassessing our whole encounter.

“I thought you were upset,” he chuckles, pressing his face further into my neck. He reminds me of this every time because he still remembers it clearly. “My first time on Earth and I thought I’d already made a human angry.” He brings his head up to smirk at me. “But now I know that’s just how your face is.”

“Rude.” I nudge at him. He tosses the book aside and pulls me down on top of him.

And I think, how lucky I am that I get to live for eternity with this smile pressing kisses against my face.

I get to fall asleep and wake up to him. Him and all his constellations across his skin. To eyes that blaze like blue wildfires and bronze curls that stardust falls from every time he combs his shimmering fingers through it. To the silver wedding band that never moves from his finger, and the warmth of my own ring glowing brightly against my hand.

Because he’s my husband, the love of my life, my partner, my match in every way.

His name is Simon—and he’s _my_ Sun.

-End-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little throwback to the end of the first chapter because I'm a sucker for full circle cliches. ---Thank you to all of you who supported this story. I had a blast--seriously, SO MUCH fun writing this and it's probably my favorite thing I've written lately because it was just for pure angst and gushy, pathetic, over the top romance. I got to write about my favorite myths, our boys, Pen and Micah, coolness-personified-Aggie, Fiona (love of my life), Nickels, too. And, Ebb and her wife, Hades (which I now totally ship? Never thought I'd say that I shipped Hades with Ebb Petty). Oh, and the terrible regency/period era AU butchering lol Thank you if you stuck around for this super AU-AU for this long! Until next time, bye!


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